


The Ayase Family Jewels

by VTR



Series: Alpha Extraordinaire [3]
Category: Love Live! School Idol Festival (Video Game), Love Live! School Idol Festival ALL STARS, Love Live! School Idol Project, Love Live! Sunshine!!
Genre: A/B/O, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Children, F/F, Family, Futanari, Parenthood, Pregnancy, Slice of Life, Were-Creatures, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-02
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2019-10-20 23:09:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 42,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17631494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VTR/pseuds/VTR
Summary: Their mothers made keeping a pack together seem so easy.Sequel to Elicchi, Alpha Extraordinaire





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hello my friends!!! a few things:
> 
> first of all, i was supposed to be writing the muse and aqours high school stories. that did not happen because pretty much all i've been thinking about since the day i finished elicchi was what should happen after, not before. that's just where my heart is so i wrote this forbidden sequel story even though there's barely any canon content for the pdp girls
> 
> second, this is a really really long first chapter and i did not execute it quite like i imagined i would, there are a shit ton of characters by now so PLEASE bear with me while i find my plot and my voice for this new story
> 
> and finally, this is meant as a true sequel, not really a standalone fic, so i'm assuming knowledge of all the happenings of the first story. i will make the massive family tree later yes
> 
> please i hope yall like it, leave me a hot comment

High-pitched squalls that were neither fully human nor fully animal cut through the night, jolting Karin and Ai from their desperately-needed slumber. Ai made as if to sit up, but Karin gently eased her back down to the pillow, frowning at how warm to the touch she still was. It’d been a rough week for everyone, but most of all for baby Natsumi, who was unused to sleeping apart from her parents and being deprived of her mother’s cuddles, but neither Karin nor Ai were willing to risk her contracting Ai’s illness. The tiny omega wailed horribly from her crib until at last Karin came to her rescue, and even then her cries were still insistent.

“Bottle in the fridge,” Ai mumbled through her exhausted, feverish haze.

Karin took her shrieking cub down the hall, keenly aware that the little one would more than likely wake at least one other member of the pack, if not all of them, but there was nothing else to be done but to carry her down to the kitchen to try and feed her. Ai had a couple bottles labeled in the fridge for Karin to feed the baby herself, so Karin warmed one up, rocking and bouncing the baby all the while, and finally offered the milk to her cub.

Alas, there was no respite for Karin’s ears.

The cub took only a little of the milk before sputtering and screaming again, and refused subsequent offers of the bottle. Karin stroked her velvety fur and rocked her helplessly, desperation and anxiety at all the noise setting her own fur to pricking through her skin. She hadn’t had this much trouble with her firstborn, Miyu, and couldn’t remember her parents ever having much trouble with her baby sister, either.

“What are you doing, Karin?”

Karin turned around to see a dead-eyed Setsuna trundling into the kitchen. Damn it. She’d hoped to let her fellow alpha packmate get at least another hour’s worth of sleep, but Natsumi’s nighttime fit had once again roused poor Setsuna far too early, and with little hope of getting back to bed.

“Natsumi is upset again,” Karin said. “I can’t get her to calm down. Her diaper’s fresh, and I thought she might be hungry, but…” She pressed the bottle’s nipple to the stubborn baby’s mouth to demonstrate.

Setsuna took one look at the crying cub and sighed. “She needs her mother, Karin,” she said. “I know you don’t want her to get sick, too, but it’s the only way. Go and let Ai feed her, she’ll calm down. Trust me.”

Karin was reluctant, as if Natsumi was this difficult while healthy, she could only imagine what it would be like if she got sick, but Setsuna, who was father to five older cubs already, was significantly more experienced in the ways of childcare, and so Karin ultimately gave in to her advice. She gave Setsuna’s shoulder an affectionate and apologetic shake before returning to the bedroom. Ai seemed to have drifted back to sleep, and Karin felt awful waking her again.

“Baby,” she said as she seated herself on the bed and patted Ai’s leg. “Natsumi won’t take the bottle. She only wants you.”

Ai groaned and struggled upright, her head still spinning from her fever, and managed to prop herself up against her pillows. Karin laid the still-crying Natsumi aside for a moment to assist Ai in removing her top, after which she scooped the baby back up and placed her in Ai’s arms. The difference in Natsumi’s behavior was immediate as she took in her omega mother’s scent and latched hungrily onto her breast.

With the little cub soothed and quiet at last, Karin breathed a sigh of relief, and went briefly to the bathroom to prepare a cool cloth for Ai, whose skin was still burning and whose breaths came heavily. It was quite a task to juggle caring for her sick wife in addition to their two young cubs, but it was one that had to be done, like it or not, so Karin didn’t complain. Eli wouldn’t have complained, after all.

“Is she going to sleep?” Karin asked in a whisper while she dabbed at her mate’s face and neck with the cloth.

The cool damp was a welcome relief for Ai, who sighed and nodded. “Take her, Karin,” she said. “My arms are getting weak.”

Karin obeyed and retrieved the drowsing cub from her mate and laid her down in the crib with incredible delicacy. Once she was satisfied that the little one was asleep, she returned to the bed, where Ai had opted to push her furs in rather than replace her top. Karin drew the blankets about them and kissed her wife’s now-fuzzy cheek.

“Good night again,” she said, and then shut her eyes in hopes of drifting off quickly.

Life as a parent could never be that easy, of course. It was precisely when Karin’s consciousness began to slip away that the bedroom door came open just a crack, and two little feet made their way over to the bed.

“Mommy?” came the little girl’s voice through Karin’s dream.

“Hm?” Karin’s heavy eyelids came open, and there stood little Miyu, teary-eyed and with her dark fur threatening to push through. “What’s wrong, Miyu?”

“I had a bad dream,” the cub explained. “Can I sleep in here with you?”

Karin glanced warily first at her sleeping wife, and then at the baby’s crib. She reluctantly pulled herself out of bed and hoisted Miyu up into her arms. “Mama is still sick, so you can’t sleep in here,” she said. “Let’s go back to your room. I’ll sleep with you in there.”

The baby alpha clung tight to Karin, taking in the safe and secure scent of her musk, and cuddled close once the two of them were finally tucked into her bed.

“Only sweet dreams this time,” Karin told her, and planted a kiss on the cub’s forehead. “Mommy’s here now.”

Sleep took Karin so swiftly afterward that she was not even sure if the cub replied. It was when the very first rays of sunlight began to peek through the curtains that she woke again, still with weighted eyelids and sluggish limbs, but curiously unable to fall back asleep. She sat up, rubbing the crust from her blurry eyes, and noted that Miyu was gone, so after one final stretch, she took herself down the stairs to find her.

“I don’t _want_ eggs!”

It wasn’t very hard to locate the little alpha, who was currently in her furs and screaming up a storm in the kitchen while the other, older cubs in the pack looked on in concern. Kasumi, a seasoned mother who feared no cub, wielded a spatula at the little fiend and put her in her place (or tried).

“Well, if you don’t want eggs, then what _do_ you want?” she demanded. “It has to be something we have – and I don’t have any soup!”

“I – want – _soup_!” Miyu snarled, and stomped her foot for emphasis.

“There – is – no – soup!” Kasumi shot right back.

Karin, exhausted as she was, entered the room with her back straight and her head high, as she believed her own father would, and took on her raging cub herself.

“What’s going on here, Miyu?” she asked in the most authoritative voice she could muster.

“I want soup, and Kasumin’s not making any!” Miyu cried.

Kasumi took a great breath as though she meant to shout again, but Karin held up a hand to stop her. “We don’t have any soup right now,” she said. “Either you eat the eggs or you pick something else, but we don’t have any soup to make.”

Miyu did not agree with that at all. She stuck her tail straight out, stomped her little foot as hard as she could, and let loose an awful baby roar that grated on the ears of everyone present. Karin, quick on her toes, pressed the cub down to the tile just as soon as she began to thrash and scream in a true alpha rampage. Every time Miyu did this Karin was seized with worry and fear; she knew it was normal for young alphas to have uncontrollable fits, and she’d had them herself when she was young, but it was still heart-wrenching to see her little one with her eyes glazed over, roaring and kicking and slashing beyond all control.

“Karin, I’ve had just about enough of this,” Kasumi berated her over the cub’s scratchy roars. “This happens _every_ day, over the tiniest little things! I can’t take it! You need to get her behavior in check or else find another babysitter, because I’m so sick of dealing with this!”

Setsuna arrived on the scene at precisely that moment, when Karin was pinning her screeching child down while Kasumi screamed at her and Setsuna’s own little cubs bristled with nervous energy. Just another Thursday morning with the pack! She didn’t even spare the commotion a second glance as she made her way to the coffee pot, filled up her “World’s #1 Dad” travel mug, and kissed each of her cubs goodbye (paying special attention to the youngest, an alpha called Emi, who was on the verge of a wild shift herself).

“Would you just shut your mouth, Kasumi?” Karin roared over the high-pitched racket. “I’m trying my best! You’re belittling me in front of all the kids!”

At that, the previously impassive Setsuna showed her fangs in an incredibly rare display of aggression. “Don’t talk to her like that,” she warned.

A frustrated growl rumbled in Karin’s throat at now having lost the support of even her best friend, and she quickly snatched up her still-roaring cub and carried her outside, past Kasumi and Setsuna and the eyes of those other packmates who’d come from their beds to check on all the racket. The silence out in the fresh, chilled morning air coupled with Karin’s own scent brought little Miyu down from her fit much quicker than all the fighting in the kitchen.

“There now, baby girl, Mommy’s got you,” Karin murmured into the cub’s hair. She remembered all too well how desperately frightening and overwhelming it was to be a little child with no control over the raw, frenzied energy of alphahood pulsing through her body. Mama and Mommy were always there for little Karin, though, kissing her and cuddling her and stroking her fur, and now Karin did her best to emulate them for Miyu.

When the cub at last fell silent save for her pitiful sniffles, Karin lifted her up again and carried her back into the house. She completely bypassed the kitchen, from which there now came a lighter sort of chatter, and took the cub up to see her sick Mama and her baby sister. To Karin’s surprise, Ai was sitting up and nursing Natsumi again.

“Are you better now, Mama?” Miyu asked as Karin placed her down on the bed. She crawled over, plainly curious about the mechanics of feeding a baby.

“Not quite,” Ai said. “I’m still pretty sick, but Natsumi was hungry. What about you, Miyu-chan? Have you eaten yet?”

Karin, fearful of another fit over breakfast, quickly replied for the cub. “We were just about to go to the store and get some soup, actually.”

Miyu brightened considerably at that, and began to bounce on the bed. “Yay! We’re getting soup!”

“Soup, huh?” Ai chuckled at her little one’s excitement. “Make sure you get some diapers for Natsumi, too, alright?”

Ai offered the baby to Karin (as her arms were still too weak to hold her for long), and Karin delighted in the cub’s tiny rumbles. It was decided that Natsumi would come along, too, to give Ai the chance to rest a while longer, so once Mommy and cubs were dressed and groomed, they headed downstairs together. Kasumi was there, sending each of her cubs off to school with a hug and a kiss and a packed lunch, save for her youngest, who hadn’t yet started school. Setsuna, too, received a hug and a kiss and a lunch, as well as a whispered promise of a _little something_ for later.

Kasumi gave Karin and her cubs a suspicious look when they came to retrieve their shoes and put on their coats. “Where are you guys off to?” she asked.

“We’re getting SOUP!” Miyu declared, and put on an alarmingly vindictive grin for a five year-old.

If looks could kill, Karin would surely have dropped dead from the venom in Kasumi’s glare. Oh, but who was Kasumi to judge them, right? It’s not as though she had five well-adjusted and well-behaved cubs of her own! Right?

 

Whimpers began to slip from Yumi’s throat, and she shifted her hips ever so slightly, right up into the face of her mate. The alpha’s lips and tongue were well experienced in the business of pleasure-making, and happily delivered every stroke and prod and kiss until finally Yumi shuddered and rumbled her satisfaction. With stars still playing at the edges of her vision, Yumi gazed downward, and was met with the pleasant green of her love’s singular eye. Where the other eye should have been there was only a scarred pit, a feature which might have been ugly and frightening to an outsider, but Yumi knew there wasn’t a mean or scary bone in Kiyoko’s body.

There wasn’t anyone else in the world, after all, that she could imagine sharing such intimacy with. Kiyoko had always been sweet and patient when it came to Yumi working through her cubhood suffering and learning to live like a normal omega, and had been especially understanding when they reached the age when the primal urge to mate began to make itself known. That respectful patience made Kiyoko all the more attractive to Yumi, and now, with their scents mingling and their hips rocking rhythmically together, Yumi found it ever easier to lose herself in the act.

Of course, it was still a weekday, so once their session concluded with pleasured snarls and a burst of love, Yumi was forced to leave the comfort of their bed to get ready for class at ten o’clock. She threw her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, but quickly regretted it, as the room began to spin all around her. She pressed a hand to her head and squeezed her eyes shut, willing her body to regain its sense of balance.

“What’s wrong?” Kiyoko asked, and sat up beside her.

“I got dizzy suddenly,” Yumi said. “I probably sat up too fast.”

Kiyoko frowned at that. “That’s how Ai got started, too, you know,” she said. “She had a couple dizzy spells in the morning, and now she’s been in bed sick all week!”

Yumi shook her head and stood, determined not to come down with whatever awful flu Ai had contracted. She could walk without swaying, at least, but she still sensed that her balance wasn’t quite right, so she took a little more care than usual. Kiyoko noticed, of course, and came to provide a steadying arm.

“Why don’t you just stay home and rest today?” the alpha asked her. “I don’t want you getting sick, too.”

“I don’t need to miss this lecture,” was Yumi’s only reply before she began to thumb through the clothes hung in the closet.

Kiyoko sighed and let Yumi go about dressing herself and brushing her hair despite her budding illness. Her mate was certainly a stubborn one when it came to her schooling. When both were dressed and ready, they came down the stairs together, and Kiyoko kept an arm about Yumi in case the dizziness struck her again. Kasumi was in the living room, and she sniffed the air dramatically when the couple arrived, noting also Yumi’s unsteady gait.

“Gee! You guys sure are late for breakfast!” she said with a sarcastic roll of her eyes. “Decided to sleep in?”

Kiyoko was well used to Kasumi’s teasing, as they’d both grown up in the Muse pack, and unlike her reactive older sister Karin, Kiyoko knew it was all in good fun. In the kitchen, Kiyoko’s best friend Sayuri and her mate Kanata were busy washing all the plates and cups in the sink. Breakfast alone produced an obscene amount of dishes, so Kasumi made sure everyone stayed on top of the washing up.

“Everyone else already left?” Kiyoko asked, noting the silence in the house.

“Yeah! You guys are way late!” Sayuri replied. “I’m still here because I’m on a later shift today, but everyone else is already gone to work and school! Even Karin left, but she just went to the store.”

“I’m glad for that,” Kanata said, and yawned hugely. “Her cubs have been waking me up every morning. It’s hard for even _me_ to get back to sleep with that kind of screaming going on…”

All agreed on the troublesome behavior of Karin’s cubs, particularly Miyu, who was old enough to know better than to throw temper tantrums beyond those unavoidable for a typical alpha cub. But there wasn’t much for any of them to do about it – at least, not until Karin herself admitted that there was a problem, and that was a task in itself!

“I feel better now that I’ve eaten,” Yumi said once she finished her breakfast of leftovers, and, as if to demonstrate to Kiyoko, stood confidently and delivered her plate to the sink. Her mate, however, was still intent on coddling her.

“I can drive you to school just in case,” Kiyoko said, and Yumi was forced to agree, if only to make her feel better.

The pair of them found their shoes and their jackets and took their leave, with Kiyoko promising to return shortly. That left just Sayuri, Kanata, and Kasumi, and the two little cubs playing at their feet. The smaller cub, who was still young enough to be in her furs, found Sayuri’s leg and attached herself to it, her little tail swishing to and fro.

“Papa,” she said, “we go outside?”

Sayuri practically radiated delight at her cub’s sweet little words, and lifted her up to plant a huge kiss on her cheek before setting her back down. “Haruka! Of course we can play outside!” she said. “But we gotta put on our shoes and our jackets, okay? Come on, I'll race ya! Let’s see who can get ready first! Ready, set…”

Kanata settled herself on the sofa beside Kasumi, a gentle smile playing on her lips. Little Haruka was a fuzzy ball of energy, just like her papa, and indeed like Kanata’s own father, too. Sleepy Kanata sometimes had trouble matching the cub’s explosive pace, so she counted herself lucky that her mate could match their little one step for step.

“So when’s Sayuri gonna marry you?” Kasumi asked while she absentmindedly flipped through the TV channels. There wasn’t much but garbage on at such an early hour, so she settled on some children’s program for Emi, who had little interest in going outside where it was chilly.

“I don’t know,” Kanata replied truthfully. “We’re just going at our own pace. That’s fine, right? Besides, Kasumi-chan… Didn’t you already have two cubs when you finally married Setsuna?”

Kasumi snorted at Kanata’s cheeky grin. “Fine, fine!”

Kasumi’s phone began to buzz from the coffee table, interrupting their conversation. The name of Kasumi’s eldest cub, Yuki, lit up the screen, and Kasumi answered quickly, fearful that something might be wrong.

“Yuki-chan? What’s going on?” she asked.

“Hi, Mama,” came Yuki’s voice from the other end. “It’s nothing serious, I was just wondering if… Well, Mei invited me over after school, so I was just… wondering if I could go, that’s all! Can I?”

Kasumi furrowed her brow. There was an edge in young omega’s voice that she couldn’t quite place, and it tickled at her nerves. But who was she to play the mean mama and decline based on assumptions alone? She agreed, but with a condition. “Well… I guess you can go, but you have to be home by dinnertime!”

“I will, Mama! Thank you!”

Kanata noted Kasumi’s perturbed expression. “Something happen?”

“That was just Yuki, she asked to go to Mei’s house,” Kasumi replied. “Which is fine, but… I dunno. Something about her tone didn’t seem right. Oh, that girl better not be sneaking around! I swear, if I catch her…”

Kanata pulled the throw blanket slung over the back of the couch down to wrap herself in it, and settled her head on a pillow as though she meant to sleep (and she did mean to sleep). “She has been acting pretty funny lately, don’t you think? She can’t stay off her phone, but if I pass by she puts it in her pocket.”

“Sissy talks to a boy on her phone,” little Emi piped up.

Kasumi shot up straight at that juicy little tidbit. “Oh yeah? She talks to a boy? Did she tell you that?”

“Uh-huh,” Emi said. “She talks to him all the time! And he’s a very big boy.”

Kasumi supposed she couldn’t get on to Yuki _too_ much, as she herself had hung out with an alpha boy when she was that age. But she couldn’t very well have the cub going behind her back and potentially putting herself in a bad situation (young alphas weren’t always the most considerate or intelligent when it came to omegas), so she made a mental note to have a heart-to-heart with Yuki-chan when she returned… or else she could do a little undercover work.

 

Miyu dashed through the aisles of the supermarket, dodging other shoppers and their carts and sharing an alarming number of near-misses with delicate product displays. She was completely deaf to the pleas of her Mommy to stop running, and instead decided to turn it into a game.

“Catch me, Mommy! Catch me, catch me!”

Had they not been in a crowded store, Karin might have easily snatched up her little devil of a cub, but she risked crashing into someone if she took off running, and she had to push Natsumi in the stroller besides.

“Miyu, get back here _now_!”

Miyu wasn’t even in sight, although Karin could still hear her giggling and her noisy little footsteps elsewhere in the store. People were beginning to look at her as if to say, “Control your child!” but Miyu was far beyond control. She was a feisty little cub who bowed to no one, not even her alpha mommy, and it was horrifically embarrassing. Miyu _did_ come back after a couple of heart-pounding minutes, and in her hands she held a jumbo box of cartoon-shaped gummies.

“Mommy! Let’s get this!” she said, and tossed the box into the stroller next to her baby sister.

“What?” Karin pulled the box out and inspected it. Her child most definitely did _not_ need 36 packets of sugary gummies! She handed them back to Miyu with a disapproving look. “We’re not getting this, Miyu-chan. Put it back where you found it.”

That, of course, did not sit well with Miyu, who began to bristle. “I want it, Mommy!”

“I know you do, but we can’t get it right now,” Karin replied. “We came to get soup, remember? Put the gummies back.”

“No!” Miyu growled, and showed the fangs that were beginning to form in her mouth. “I’m getting them!”

Karin felt her own fur begin to bristle out, and it took all she had not to growl at her cub. “I said no, Miyu! Give those to me! I’ll put them back myself!”

She snatched the box back from Miyu’s hands, and all hell broke loose there in the soup aisle. Miyu roared with all her tiny might, and it was impressively fearsome for a little one despite the cubbish scratchiness. Karin couldn’t even bring herself to be impressed, though, when her cub was stomping and screaming her heart out in the grocery store, causing the other shoppers to murmur and distance themselves, or else cast judgmental glares her way. To top it all off, baby Natsumi was frightened by the roaring, and began to cry those grating human-beast hybrid cries.

“Stop, Miyu!” Karin begged above the noise. “Stop this right now!”

“I hate you, Mommy! I’m leaving!” was Miyu’s snarling reply, and she bolted from the aisle.

“Miyu!” Karin had no choice but to chase her this time, though she moved at an awkward jogging pace to keep from jostling her already-upset baby too much. “Stop! Please stop!”

The alpha cub did not even bother replying to her desperate father, so angry was she over the gummy denial. She ran as fast as her young legs would take her, fueled by the primal alpha energy that coursed through her body, and flew right out the automatic doors of the supermarket.

“Miyu, no!”

Karin had no choice but to leave Natsumi parked inside the store and chase after Miyu in earnest. The parking lot was one thing, but her reckless cub was hurtling towards the busy road at an alarming pace, and Karin’s heart thundered in her ears at the thought of a passing car striking her. She was nearly caught up to the cub, perhaps a few strong strides away, when suddenly someone else rushed to her and caught her in their arms. The scent of alpha hit Karin’s nose, and a different sort of fear gripped her.

“Let her go!” she bellowed, and braced herself to fight, but instead found the struggling Miyu shoved into her arms. With little time available to fully process the situation, Karin, working almost completely on instinct by now, squeezed the flailing cub to her chest in a crushing hug. She turned away from the stranger alpha who’d helped her, instead throwing every ounce of her attention into calming the little one and keeping her safe in her arms, away from strange people and speeding cars.

“Well, I didn’t think I’d be meeting you again like this, Karin,” the stranger said once Miyu’s frustrated roars died down to only rumbles.

Karin whipped around at the mention of her name, and at last took in the sight of the other alpha. Deep red hair, green eyes, cool demeanor…

“You’re… Ryo, right?”

Ryo laughed and nodded. “Glad you still remember me after all these years!” she said. “How have things been for you? Is this your daughter?”

Karin felt a little prickle of shame at having lost control of her cub in front of someone she knew. Sure, they hadn’t seen each other since middle school, when they’d served a punishment for fighting together, but it wasn’t exactly a great second impression. “Yes, this is Miyu, she’s…” Her heart rate spiked once again when she remembered that little Natsumi was still inside the store. “Er – sorry! I don’t mean to rush off, but my baby- My baby’s still inside, so…!”

Ryo watched her go with an amused glint in her eye. Karin was a grown alpha now – tall and strong and womanly in every aspect, and yet the awkward, scramble-brained cub she once was still found a way to shine through. Determined not to let their chance meeting go to waste, Ryo followed Karin inside, and found her rocking the tiny Natsumi now while Miyu clung to her pants.

“I don’t mean to keep bugging you, Karin,” Ryo said, “but would you like to maybe grab dinner sometime this weekend? I’d love to catch up with you, and Ai, too.”

Karin might have agreed at any other time, but all she could focus on at the moment were Kasumi’s threats of refusing to babysit on account of Miyu's atrocious behavior, Ai’s illness, and Natsumi’s refusal of the bottle in favor of the breast. “I’d like to, but… Now isn’t really a good time for me,” she said. “I’m sorry! I’ve just got a lot going on right now.”

Ryo nodded and took a step back, lowering her head ever so slightly, as though she meant to submit to Karin. “I understand,” she said. “But please, give me a call sometime if you ever do have an evening free. I’m the director at UTX now, in place of my mother, so you can always contact me there. I’ve got to be back in Tokyo by Monday, but… Anyway, it was nice to see you again.”

The subtle submissive body language didn’t escape Karin, and while she appreciated the gesture, she found it unnecessary. “Ah, Ryo, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to seem like I’m brushing you off, or like I don’t want to get together,” she said. “Things really have been tough for me lately, though. Maybe we’ll make a trip out to Tokyo soon, though. I do need to visit my parents, after all.”

Sullen Miyu perked up a bit at the mention of her beloved grandparents. “Can we, Mommy?”

“Soon, love.”

Karin exchanged phone numbers with Ryo, and then returned the children to the car with neither soup nor gummies nor diapers. Ai was certain to be unhappy without the diapers, and Karin would probably have to fetch some later, but that was no big deal. Right now, the exhaustion was creeping its way back into her bones and pounding a nasty ache into her skull, and she wished for nothing more than to be in bed with her mate, fast asleep and without a care in the world. Perhaps Kiyoko might like to have a little auntie time with the kids this morning?

“I need to pee-pee,” Miyu announced almost comically soon after they left the parking lot.

Karin gripped the steering wheel just a little bit tighter. “We’ll be home in just a few minutes, okay?”

“Okay…”

Karin’s fanciful notions of a peaceful nap died right there on the pack’s doorstep. Things were in disarray again, this time with the half-shifted Kiyoko and Sayuri tripping over themselves in an attempt to find their coats and their keys and their wallets.

“What’s going on?” Karin asked.

“Yumi collapsed in the middle of class,” Kiyoko explained, her ears twitching with nervous energy. “She was feeling dizzy this morning and I was worried she might be coming down with Ai’s flu…”

Karin grabbed hold of her sister’s shoulder and shook her affectionately. “Easy, Kiyoko-chan, she’ll be alright. Drive safe.” Her eyes roved over to Sayuri, who was nearly in the same state of panic as Kiyoko. “You’re going, too?”

“Moral support!” was Sayuri’s reply to that.

The sudden scent of cub urine distracted everyone from their worry for just a moment. Karin glanced over, and was horrified to see Miyu with her pants around her ankles, pissing all along the front of the sofa while the napping Kanata was none the wiser. 

“Miyu Ayase!” Karin snapped, and so fiercely that Kanata sat up in a hurry. “You do _not_ mark in the house! How many times have I told you that?”

The cub’s response was an absolutely infuriating giggle, the laugh of a child who knows she’s done wrong but who couldn’t give two fucks about it. Karin clenched her jaw as her furs began to ripple in and her frustration with her little hellion reached its peak. Kiyoko and Sayuri chose that moment to make their exit, as Yumi was still waiting and they didn’t want to bear witness to the explosion of alpha fury Karin was about to unleash on her cub.

“I have had just about enough of your disrespect,” Karin thundered as she made her way over to her still-grinning cub. “You have been _nothing_ but trouble this morning! You threw a tantrum over breakfast, you threw _another_ tantrum at the store and almost got yourself killed running into the road! And now you’ve marked all over the sofa! No more – march yourself up to your room right now.”

Miyu continued to giggle, and tugged on her mother’s tail as though inviting her to play. The other two cubs, Emi and Haruka, had long wised up and run to their respective mothers, and baby Natsumi was beginning to whimper again. Karin’s fur stood on end, and she took a great breath as though she meant to roar or shout, but another voice cut her short.

“Miyu…”

Ai’s voice was thin and hoarse in her sickness, but even then the change in Miyu’s demeanor was drastic. The alpha cub immediately lost her grin, bowed her head, and hunched up her shoulders in typical submissive fashion, daring only once to glance up at her mama hobbling down the stairs.

“I heard everything,” Ai continued. “Do as your father says and go to your room.”

“Yes, Mama.” Miyu replied meekly, and made the walk of shame up to her room with her cheeks burning hot.

Once their cub was out of sight, Ai took Karin into her arms and held her there, soothing her like a frenzied cub. Karin loosed a savage and utterly desperate snarl, because what else was there for her to do? It’d been an awful day already and it wasn’t even noon yet! Her omega’s scent, tainted as it was with her week-long illness, took some of the edge off, at least.

“I don’t understand why she doesn’t listen to me,” Karin said, and flopped herself down onto the sofa, only to immediately spring back up at the feeling of wet on the back of her pants. “Damn it!”

“Alright, you need to get ahold of yourself, Karin,” Kasumi said as she at last emerged from the kitchen. She wanted absolutely no part of the Ayase family’s mother-cub squabbles. “Go upstairs, sit with Ai for a while. I’ll watch the baby and clean the couch up _just this once_ , but only because I feel sorry for you! Seriously, you look totally pathetic right now, and I mean a lot more than usual. So go on!”

Karin, for once, was too drained to even react to Kasumi’s only-half-serious bullying, and so she returned to bed with Ai and sank herself into the pillows with a great sigh. Karin’s cubhood fantasies of raising a family with Ai involved considerably less screaming and shifting than what the real thing now offered, and bleak hopelessness at her parenting skills and indeed her very alphahood was beginning to set in, bit by bit, day by day.

Adulthood, she supposed, wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, but she was a parent now, and couldn’t give up even if she wanted to.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so many things to introduce here rip but i'm chugging along. i fully admit the last bit's a little rushed but i'm ready to write the next chapter so
> 
> thanks for reading and commenting, my friends

Dinnertime came around quickly, and with it came Setsuna, whose coffee had long worn off and whose limbs moved in slow motion through her mental fog. She thought if she shut her eyes long enough, she might sleep where she stood, but, of course, that was unacceptable for a father of five cubs. Four of her girls rushed to greet her at the door with hugs and kisses, and Setsuna forced herself into alertness for them, sharing scents with each one in turn.

“Where’s Yuki-chan?” she asked as the cubs led her to the table. The smell of her wife’s cooking set her tummy to rumbling almost instantly, as it’d been a fair six hours since her last meal.

“I told Yuki to be home by dinner,” Kasumi said. She gave Setsuna a hearty kiss and began to fix her a plate with all her favorites.

Setsuna frowned at her eldest’s empty spot. Perhaps Yuki was just running late; they had dinner at the same time every day, after all, and it wasn’t like her to disobey her mother. She was like Setsuna in that regard, who had once been a model of exceptional cub behavior.

“I made some pudding, too, for dessert!” Kasumi announced, and the cubs cheered – _most_ of them anyway.

“Mommy…” Miyu sank a little and gazed pleadingly at Karin, whose heart shattered instantly. Ai had decreed that Miyu was not to have any pudding tonight on account of her awful behavior, but those big blue eyes were hard to resist.

“Oh, Miyu-chan…” Karin reached over to stroke the cub’s hair, and caught Kasumi sending her a stone-eyed glare. She sighed. “Mama said no dessert tonight, and we have to listen to her. Okay?”

Miyu’s lower lip came up in a pitiful pout, and tears welled in her eyes, but she said no more, and started on her dinner without the usual complaints. That much was a relief, at least, as Miyu was a stubborn and difficult eater at the best of times. Karin pressed a kiss to her cub’s forehead and then listened in as conversation began to flow between the other members of the pack.

“They told me you passed out today in class!” Ayumu said to Yumi. “What’s up with that? You don’t think you’re coming down with the flu, too, do you?”

Yumi shook her head. “I don’t feel sick,” she said. “I just felt very dizzy this morning. I stood up from my seat to get something and next thing I knew I was on the floor.”

“Ai started having dizzy spells right before she got sick,” Karin said. “You might want to stay home and rest tomorrow. If you faint again I think Kiyoko might lose it.” The grin she cast at her sister was simultaneously teasing and tender.

“I keep telling her that, but she doesn’t listen,” Kiyoko said.

“Well, I’m not feeling sick, and I’m not dizzy now,” Yumi replied. “I shouldn’t have to miss class if there’s nothing wrong.”

Kasumi gave Yumi the side-eye at that. She was always hungry for a little friendly commotion, so, as casually as possible, she asked, “Think you might just be pregnant?”

Kiyoko’s expression turned to one of pure embarrassment, with her eyes wide and her cheeks very rapidly reddening. Yumi, on the other hand, knitted her brow in apparent displeasure at the suggestion.

“Oh, I’m not sure about that,” Yumi said quite humorlessly.

Kasumi was put off by the normally-pleasant Yumi’s sudden shift in demeanor, which only furthered her suspicions. She shrugged. “Well, I’m just saying,” she said. “It’s a possibility! I had dizzy spells for a while when I was pregnant with both Yuki and Tomori.”

Yumi had no more to say on the matter, and turned her attention fully to her dinner plate. Kiyoko frowned at that; the prospect of a surprise cub was certainly a frightening one, but not entirely unwelcome, unprepared as they were. At least, that’s what she’d assumed up until now, but Yumi’s sudden iciness made her think twice.

Little Emi picked up on Yumi’s now-sour mood, and was quick to comfort her packmate. “Don’t worry, Yumi,” she said. “It’ll probably go away like my baby sister!”

The spike in tension around the table was incredible. Kasumi’s attempt at hiding her hurt was completely unsuccessful, and Setsuna jumped in immediately.

“That’s enough, Emi,” she said. “Don’t say things like that anymore.”

“But it’s true, Papa,” Emi said, as nonchalant as only a four year-old can be about such difficult topics. “Mama told me. She said sometimes a baby dies in the mama’s tummy.”

“That is true, but I said enough, so enough,” Setsuna replied.

The rest of the meal passed in tense awkwardness. No one could fault Emi; she was still too young to comprehend the extent of her parents’ grief or even the gravity of the situation in the first place. She was a cub, speaking frankly as cubs do about something she couldn’t really understand. Still, the words stung, and Kasumi was the first to finish her plate and head for the stairs.

“Don’t forget about the pudding,” she reminded everyone before she whisked herself away.

Setsuna called after her, but she was ignored, and so she finished up the rest of her food in silence. Setsuna’s older sister, Ayumu, wasn’t one to suffer for very long, and decided to inject a little fun into the evening to lighten the mood and get the cubs laughing again.

“Alright,” she said as she stood from the table, “whoever can get their plates washed and put away the fastest gets to play first in the Mario Kart tournament!”

Happy chatter at last began to flow again as the cubs scrambled to get their dishes scrubbed and rinsed. Ayumu knew a thing or two about herding and managing children, as she’d grown up as the eldest cub in the Aqours pack, and she was happy to lend her little sister a helping hand. Once the cubs were distracted, Setsuna used the opportunity to slip away and find Kasumi.

Their bedroom was empty, but Setsuna heard the water running in the bathroom down the hall, and figured Kasumi must have decided to shower. While she waited, Setsuna finally took herself out of her stiff, sharp work clothes and changed into a loose pair of shorts and one of her old anime t-shirts. Making the change from the constricting business clothes to the comfy home ones was one of her favorite daily pleasures, and the gods only knew how much Setsuna needed those little joys these days. She crawled into the bed and drew up the covers, thinking she’d only just rest her eyes, but instead slipped almost directly into sleep.

“Setsuna.”

The alpha’s eyes fluttered open at the sound of her mate’s voice. Kasumi was sitting beside her, smelling faintly of floral soap and with her hair still damp. Setsuna sat up and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips, noting the slight redness in her eyes.

“Are you okay now?” she asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Kasumi assured her, and quickly changed the subject. “Is Yuki home yet? It’s way after seven.”

Setsuna glanced at the clock on their nightstand, then frowned back at her wife. “I haven’t seen her, but then again, I fell asleep…”

The pair of them decided to return downstairs to check for their eldest daughter. There they found Miyu sitting happily at the table with a bowl of pudding, and Karin engaging her in conversation. Kasumi fixed Karin with her meanest, sharpest glare at the sight of her clearly indulging Miyu behind Ai’s back.

“You gave her dessert after all?” Kasumi asked.

“She ate so well at dinner, I thought she deserved a little reward,” Karin explained.

Kasumi didn’t have the energy to even _begin_ to explain to Karin how wrong she was, so she settled for a simple sneer instead. Normally she liked to butt out of other parents’ affairs, but Miyu had been manhandling Karin since she learned to talk, and it was hard to watch the once-sweet little cub turn into a terror tornado.

“Well, _anyway_ ,” Kasumi said, “has Yuki come home yet? She’s gonna be in big trouble if not!”

“I’m worried about her,” Setsuna said with a glance at the front door. “She doesn’t usually stay out late on purpose. What if something happened? We should call her, Kasumi…”

As if on cue, the lock on the front door clicked open, and Yuki stepped meekly inside, shoulders hunched and a scarf wrapped snug and warm about her neck. She paused when she noticed most of the family seated in the living room, fiddling with the video game system and setting up controllers, and flushed beet red when she saw that her parents were present, too, on the stairs by the kitchen. Some overpowering mix of perfume and musk clung to the young omega, and it filled the room quickly, alerting everyone present to the cub’s activities.

“Yuki…” Kasumi began, her face slowly contorting itself into a fierce scowl.

“I’m sorry I’m late!” Yuki blurted. “I-I’m just going to change clothes.” She slid quickly past her parents and took herself up the stairs, cheeks burning and fur playing at her skin.

“You stink!” Miyu called after her, and was promptly chastised by Karin.

All the adults in the room made brief eye contact. They’d all once been horny teenage cubs, and thus were well familiar with the ineffective perfume trick, which was perhaps the most popular musk coverup for first-time secret matings. The ever-helpful Ayumu began to whoop and cheer to whip the cubs back into an excited frenzy over their video game and distract them once again from the drama about to unfold. Setsuna turned to Kasumi, her eyes huge and horrified at the scent that still lingered in the air.

“Kasumi, who…?”

Kasumi gave her mate’s shoulder an affectionate rub. “Leave it to me, alright?” she said. “It’s better if she hears it from an omega.”

Setsuna was also far too jittery when it came to bodily matters to really make an impact on the cub, but Kasumi chose to omit that particular reason. Their two youngest, Suzuko and Emi, who were six and four respectively, came running to tug at their father’s hands, pleading with her to join their video game. After ensuring once again that Kasumi could handle Yuki, Setsuna allowed the little ones to pull her into the living room, where Ayumu was waiting to challenge her. Kasumi watched them go with affection fluttering in her tummy; even after all these years, the sight of Setsuna interacting so tenderly with their cubs was a deeply attractive one. If only cubs could stay small and innocent forever… but, unfortunately, all cubs eventually grow up, and most start experimenting with some not-so-innocent behaviors.

It couldn’t be helped. Kasumi took herself back up the stairs and rapped authoritatively on Yuki’s door, but received no answer. Water was running in the bathroom, and Kasumi realized her cub was likely busy eradicating the scent of sex from her body. She was forced to wait a while, so Kasumi returned to her own bedroom to tidy up a bit and think over how to approach this delicate subject with her cub.

She couldn’t be too angry with Yuki, not really – not when Kasumi herself had spent the better part of her teen years with her hands playing beneath Setsuna’s skirt. Of course, those sneaky little touches hadn’t resulted in a full-on mating until the pair of them were nearly out of high school, but Yuki was the product of that first, explosive union, and that’s what scared Kasumi the most. She was determined not to become a grandmother in her thirties, but more importantly, she wanted to keep her cub from the stresses of early motherhood and allow her to enjoy her youth.

When the sound of the water stopped and she was certain that Yuki was back in her room, Kasumi went back and knocked more gently this time. Yuki answered with her head bowed, plainly trying to conceal the whopping pair of love bites that decorated her neck. Kasumi noticed, but opted to say nothing about them.

“I’m sorry I was so late, Mama,” she said. “I know you said to be home by dinner…”

“The leftovers are in the fridge for you,” Kasumi said. “But wait – we need to talk, and you know it.”

Yuki averted her eyes and allowed her mother inside. Kasumi shut the door behind her, and the two of them sat side by side on the bed, Yuki with her head still bowed and Kasumi wearing a contemplative frown.

“Alright, I know you didn’t go to Mei’s,” Kasumi said at last. “Who did you mate with?”

Yuki gave a little start at her mother’s forthrightness, and her cheeks flushed bright red. With her dark hair to match, she looked every bit like the easily-flustered Setsuna in that moment.

“I-I didn’t mate with anyone!” the cub insisted. “We just… were trying on some sprays, and then…” 

“Save it,” was Kasumi’s curt reply. “In case you forgot, Yuki-chan, you are one of _five cubs_. I know what sex musk smells like, and I smelled it on you underneath all that perfume. You thought I wouldn’t be able to tell, right?”

Despite her best efforts to hold it back, Yuki’s fur began to push itself through her skin as shame gripped her. She was a good girl, after all – she’d never been in real trouble before, and had always done well in school, too. Now, with her mother staring straight through her, she found frightened tears welling in her eyes.

“I’m sorry, Mama,” was all she could manage to choke out.

Kasumi softened at the sight of the tears. No parent in their right mind ever wants to see their children cry, and Kasumi was no exception, but she also had no qualms about protecting her cub from questionable decisions and people. Better that her baby cried now, with her, than later at the hands of some pissheaded little alpha.

“What’s her name?” Kasumi pressed her again. “If you like her so much, why not invite her for dinner sometime? I’d like to know who my little cub is hanging out with, anyway.”

“ _His_ name is Kensuke,” Yuki said, and then hesitated briefly, ears twitching. “He’s… He’s kind of shy, so I don’t know if he’d want to come over.”

Kasumi’s expression faltered a bit at the sex of her cub’s partner (that certainly explained the lateness), but she bounced back quickly lest Yuki think she disapproved entirely. “We could always go out someplace together with Papa instead,” she suggested. “That’d be a little more personal, right? Besides, I think Papa would like to meet your boyfriend, too.”

Yuki glanced warily at the phone lying on her pillow. “I mean, I could ask him, but he’ll probably say no.”

“Well, ask him anyway,” Kasumi said. “I don’t exactly feel comfortable letting my little girl run around with some alpha I haven’t even met, you know. You’re not off the hook for lying to me, either – you’re gonna come straight home after school every day from now on, got it?”

“Yes, Mama.” Yuki knew there was little use in arguing; her punishment could have been much worse, but Kasumi was a fair and ultimately tender mama.

With that taken care of for the time being, Kasumi returned to the living area, where the Kart tournament was winding down. Ayumu was in the lead, naturally, followed by her own cub, an alpha called Kasane. Kasumi’s cubs Tomori and Aya sat in third and fourth places, though Tomori was quickly gaining on Kasane. Kasumi was surprised to see that the game-loving Setsuna had fallen out of the race, but when she came closer, the reason became clear. Her mate was sprawled on the other couch, fast asleep with her mouth hanging just slightly open.

“Papa fell asleep, huh?” Kasumi asked her two youngest, who had fallen out of the tournament early and taken to playing with their toys nearby.

“She said she was just getting comfortable,” Suzuko replied. “Now she looks like Kanata!”

Exhaustion was a long-term specter in Setsuna’s life. Since the very day she found out she was going to be a father for the first time, the poor alpha had been working her tail off, but she was far too proud to accept work from someone like Ai, with whom she could have a job that still supported her family but without working herself down to the bone. She paid the price for her stubbornness during moments like these, when she should have been playing with her cubs, but her worn body forced her to sleep.

She woke with a little encouragement from Kasumi and the little ones, and then dragged herself up to her bedroom, where she promptly collapsed into the blankets to wait for her wife while she bathed the cubs. She tried her hardest to keep her eyes open so that she might be able to talk to Kasumi for a while, but it felt too satisfying when she closed them, and she was asleep again before she knew it. She stirred again only when she felt Kasumi slide into the bed beside her and begin to kiss and nuzzle at her face.

“Wake up,” Kasumi said. “We need to talk.”

Setsuna rumbled a little and forced herself upright. Kasumi immediately pressed herself up against the alpha, clearly hungry for her attention, which Setsuna was happy to deliver.

“How’s Yuki-chan?” Setsuna asked, though she feared the answer.

“She’s seeing an alpha boy,” Kasumi replied, and snickered at the immediate disgust that spread on her mate’s face. “I had a feeling you wouldn’t like that.”

“Of course I don’t like it,” Setsuna said. “I don’t want my baby exposed to that! Did you cut her off?”

“I wouldn’t do that to her,” Kasumi said. “She’s an omega girl, Setsuna. Sometimes omega girls happen to like alpha boys – that’s just the way of things! …Have you ever wished you could knot me, baby?”

Setsuna’s face burned bright red almost instantly. “No! I haven’t!”

Kasumi had a hearty laugh at that. “Okay, okay, but seriously, I told her to invite him over for dinner this weekend. I expect you to be on your best behavior!”

Setsuna grumbled, but there was little use in trying to argue. The last thing she wanted was to push her rapidly-maturing Yuki away, so she’d have to play along. In any case, Kasumi seemed to be done talking about that, and was now busy running her fingers along Setsuna’s thighs. It’d been a depressingly long time since they’d made love, so even with the weariness that gnawed at her consciousness and the phantom of an early morning that loomed over her, Setsuna was happy to accept Kasumi’s tentative squeeze to the front of her shorts.

They twisted themselves together then, as they so often did, their kisses sloppy and hungry, and their hands bolder with every burning touch. But when the time finally came that Kasumi begged for her alpha to fuck her, Setsuna was struck with confusion at her body’s unwillingness to cooperate, and she hesitated.

“What’s wrong?” Kasumi asked. She slid her panties down her legs and tossed them away, hoping Setsuna might be stirred into action at the sight of the tempting pink underneath.

It wasn’t that Setsuna _didn’t_ want to plow headlong into her mate – she did, very much! But before she could even begin to explain what the problem was, the impatient Kasumi grabbed her waistband and yanked her shorts down. It was perhaps only a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity and a half that Kasumi sat there, silent, and stared at Setsuna’s reddened but still near completely limp penis. Setsuna was agonizingly aware of the implications – that is, that she didn’t want Kasumi – but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“I-I’m sorry!” Setsuna spluttered at last. “I just… I can’t get in the mood tonight, Kasumi. I’m really sorry!”

“Well, you seemed in the mood a minute ago,” Kasumi said. “But… no problem! It happens. Let’s just sleep.”

Kasumi really tried to smile and reassure her mate, but in the end she couldn’t mask her disappointment and her embarrassment, and guilt ripped through Setsuna’s chest. What their marriage needed at the moment was the same deep intimacy they’d always shared, an assurance of the other’s love, but with Setsuna’s body now failing to deliver, it made her feel inadequate, and actually scared. She tried to cuddle up close to her mate, but was met with a deep warning growl, and so was forced to retreat to her half of the bed alone.

She could only hope this wouldn’t last.

 

The following morning, Ai finally found the strength to pull herself out of the bed and take a shower on her own. There was still a weariness in her body and a quiver in her step, but that was to be expected after a week of feverish bedrest. Karin was still asleep, and normally Ai might have woken her, but this time she let her be, as her alpha had spent the entire week waiting hand and foot on Ai and the cubs, and she was no doubt exhausted.

The smell of breakfast drew Ai downstairs, baby Natsumi on her hip, but rather than finding the usual lighthearted family meal, the air was laced with all sorts of tension. Kasumi and Setsuna weren’t engaging in their usual lovey-dovey rituals, and in fact were hardly looking at each other at all! Based on that and Setsuna’s slumped shoulders, Ai assumed something must have happened between them. Their daughter Yuki, too, kept her head bowed, avoiding eye contact with everyone, and Ai thought she saw a deeply-colored splotch on the young omega’s neck.

It wasn’t just the Sakurauchis who were behaving oddly, either. Kiyoko and Yumi both seemed uncomfortable, though Kiyoko expressed this through nervous tension and a great frown, while Yumi sat stone-faced, her eyes hardened in such a way that it reminded Ai of Yumi’s blood father. How much drama could have possibly gone down while Ai was sick, anyway?

“Mama!”

Miyu sprang from her seat and attached herself to her mother, grinning hugely. All was forgiven from yesterday, it seemed (though Ai was still in the dark about her sneaky helping of pudding).

“Mama, you smell good, are you better now?” the little alpha asked as Ai slid into her spot at the table with the baby in her lap.

“I’m feeling a little better today!” Ai said, and rubbed the rumbling cub’s back. “I didn’t miss too much, did I? Hehe! What’s for breakfast?”

Shizuku delivered a plate to the table, covered in a hearty breakfast typical of the Kousaka sisters (their parents taught them well in the ways of the kitchen), and Ai realized then how hungry she really was. Since she fell ill she’d only eaten light, plain foods, or simply foregone food altogether in favor of fluids, but now, with her fever broken and her head on straight, her body demanded some real sustenance.

“Glad to see you’re feeling better, Ai!” Shizuku said with a cheery smile. “Karin’s been running herself ragged between you and the cubs!”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that,” Ai replied. “She’s still sleeping upstairs! I hope the kids haven’t been too much trouble.”

Kasumi glanced back at her from preparing her cubs’ lunchboxes. “Oh, they’ve been trouble, alright!”

Only the younger cubs and Sayuri talked much during the meal. Everyone else seemed far too tired (Kanata) or busy wrestling whatever somber thoughts were contributing to the heavy atmosphere. When the cubs at last marched off to school, and the adults to work (or, in Yumi’s case, the doctor – perhaps that was why she was so unhappy), Ai decided to pester Kasumi.

“Alright, spill it, Kasumin,” she said. “What’s gotten into everybody? Everything feels so… so… off! You and Setsuna finally get into a fight or something?”

Kasumi wrinkled her nose at that. “Not a fight,” she said, but didn’t continue, as the youngest cubs were still tumbling about the kitchen, eager, as cubs often are, to soak up some too-adult conversation.

Ai followed Kasumi’s gaze, realized the problem, and then called out to her little one. “Miyu-chan!” she said. “Take Emi and Haruka and go play outside! Go on!”

“It’s too cold outside!” Miyu whined.

“Then why don’t you go wake up Mommy and see if she’ll set up the kotatsu?” Ai suggested.

That sparked all three cubs into action, though little Haruka was spurred on mostly by the enthusiasm of Miyu and Emi, as she was too young herself to remember what a kotatsu even was. They climbed the stairs, giggling all the way, and with Kasumi warning them to let Haruka up first in case she tumbled. That left just baby Natsumi, who was still less than a year old and not likely to be bothered by discussion of Setsuna’s erectile difficulties.

“Well…” Kasumi began as she moved from the dining table to the living area, where she sank into the sofa with a great sigh. “I haven’t had sex in over a month. Possibly two. Probably two.”

“Uh, well, that’s a surprise,” Ai said, and she meant it. “Then again, wasn’t it about two months ago when-”

“Yes,” Kasumi interrupted, not willing to tread on that delicate subject again today. “I mean, I understand, kinda. We’ve both been grieving, but… It’s just that she feels so… distant, you know? It’s like she barely has time for me anymore. Last night we got so close – god, we were so close! - but she couldn’t even get it up! I mean, before she just kept putting it off, saying she was too tired, or busy, or whatever, but that? I mean, sheesh… Kinda makes you feel unattractive.”

Ai nuzzled into her longtime friend with a rumble. “Don’t say that,” she said. “Setsuna loves you! And I’m sure she still thinks you’re attractive! She’s just the sensitive type, right? So maybe all this is just messing with her more than she lets on.”

“I guess,” Kasumi said, and kicked her feet up into Ai’s lap, where Natsumi proceeded to be fascinated by them. “All I want is a little support. It’s been hard for me, too, you know. And… I mean… I just need dick, Ai, honestly. This is the longest I’ve gone without since even before we were married!”

Karin arrived back on the scene just in time to hear Kasumi describe how badly she “needed dick,” and Ai erupted into laughter at the alpha’s appalled expression. The cubs paid the omega’s crude mouth no mind, as they were far too excited about getting to warm themselves beneath the kotatsu just as soon as Karin dragged it out from the hallway closet.

“Sooo, anyway, what else did I miss?” Ai asked, hoping the answer might be somewhat more family-friendly. “Kiyoko and Yumi seemed upset somehow, too. And Yuki-chan…?” She gestured to her own neck, hoping Kasumi would understand.

“Yumi’s just mad because I told her she might be pregnant,” Kasumi said. “I mean, I was just _saying_. It's a legitimate possibility! As for Yuki, well… She’s got a boyfriend, apparently. Yes, boy – alpha boy. Setsuna’s pissed.”

“I told you she had a boyfriend!” Emi shouted from the other couch.

It was incredible how much family drama one could miss while being sick and bedridden for just one week. Ai supposed Kasumi’s sexual and marital problems had been brewing for a while, but pregnant Yumi was a surprise – that explained the random doctor’s visit. If Kiyoko took after Eli at all, she’d make a fine father someday, if not now, but Yumi’s face this morning was much less promising. It was a seriously life-changing event, after all, and Yumi was still in school besides.

“Do you think you’re well enough to take a trip to Tokyo this weekend?” Karin asked out of the blue.

“Not really, no,” Ai answered truthfully. “Why? Is everything okay?”

Karin at last attached the tabletop, and the kotatsu was completed. She switched it on, and the cubs immediately tucked themselves beneath it to enjoy the warmth.

“Everything’s fine, it’s just I got a message from Ryo asking if we wanted to go to dinner with her tomorrow, but back home, obviously,” Karin said. “Besides, we haven’t seen our parents in a while. It’d be nice to visit.”

Miyu burst out from beneath the kotatsu at the mention of visiting her grandparents. “Mommy!” she cried. “Can we _please_ go? Nonna said we could go horseback riding next time!”

Karin chuckled and scooped the baby alpha up into her lap. “Mama said she’s not feeling well enough to go,” she said. “We might have to wait until next weekend instead.”

Miyu snarled her displeasure and showed her quickly-sharpening fangs, not out of true anger, but simply as a test of her father’s will. Ai showed her own fangs and gave the cub’s hair a rough tousle.

“Stop that,” she said, and sent Miyu into a pout instead. “Karin, why don’t you take Miyu this weekend? It’ll be nice for her to get out of the house, and you, too!”

“Mama and Mom will want to see both grandcubs,” Karin reminded her.

“So we can all go together some other time,” Ai said. “But why don’t you take her this weekend? You can see Ryo, and Miyu can see her grandparents. Besides! It’ll be cute, like… one-on-one alpha time!”

Kasumi raised her eyebrows at the thought of Karin and Miyu being left to their own devices for a weekend. She was concerned mainly for Karin – the poor woman would be completely at the mercy of her wily alpha cub, with no hope of Ai showing up to rein her in and save the day. Then again, perhaps Karin might be blessed with some of Nozomi and Eli’s parenting magic if they happened to witness one of Miyu’s godawful meltdowns. And in that case, well, who was Kasumi to try and stop them?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's so much

The evening was considerably less chaotic without Miyu present, although Ai seemed to miss her baby alpha, and her mate, too. Both were packed and gone to Tokyo for a few days to visit with their birth packs, leaving the still-weary Ai and baby Natsumi to stay home. Kasumi was thankful for their absence tonight, not because she wanted to be ugly or mean, but because she could focus on getting dinner on the table without an additional and very loud little one begging at her feet for scraps or screaming that she didn’t like the meal, and also because she was expecting a guest tonight.

Kensuke, who was Yuki’s boyfriend – and the word still made her parents shudder – was to visit and have dinner with the pack tonight. Yuki had thus spent the hours since arriving home from school with her fur pushing through involuntarily while, ears twitching, she alternated between glancing at the window, the front door, and her phone. Kasumi found her anxious behavior endearingly similar to that of Setsuna’s, and she supposed it was natural for bringing a new mate home for the first time.

Some members of the pack were less than thrilled at the news of an alpha male coming into their home.

“Are you stupid?” Sayuri demanded of Setsuna and Kasumi. She was keenly aware that she and Karin were the biggest and strongest alphas in the pack, and with Karin absent, the pressure to protect the family was greater than ever. “We have cubs here! I don’t want some alpha guy knowing where our family lives! Anything could happen, and it’ll be your fault if it does!”

There was always a risk involved when it came to meeting with strange alphas, but, should things go south, one boy, alpha or no, wasn’t likely to do much damage against a large group of adult shifters.

“Besides,” Kasumi reasoned, “it’s Yuki-chan. I don’t like the idea of a boy in here, either, but I trust her dating choices. She’s a good cub.”

Still, the pack decided that a quick patrol was in order, just as a subtle demonstration of their strength. Normally, scent marking was an activity reserved for the dead of night, when other folks weren’t likely to be awake to see them, but their pack was lucky enough to live on a relatively secluded property, so this daylight marking wasn’t such a big deal. As Yuki’s father, Setsuna lead the charge, and left her scent at all the choicest spots along and within the bounds of their territory, with Sayuri never far away.

“I still think you’re crazy for letting this guy come here,” Sayuri said once their bladders were empty and their property thoroughly scented. “You could’ve at least asked the rest of us.”

“Well, we’ve got… the home turf advantage,” Setsuna replied weakly. She wasn’t quite willing to admit that she hadn’t considered the consequences in detail, she simply wanted to make her little cub happy. “I just don’t want Yuki-chan to feel like she has to sneak and go behind my back, you know? I want her to know I’m supporting her.”

“I get what you’re saying, but I still agree with Sayuri,” Kiyoko said. “You should’ve thought about the other cubs’ safety first. And Yumi’s been on edge ever since she found out, too.”

“I don’t think this is as big a deal as you guys are making it out to be,” Setsuna said. “First of all, if he wanted to hurt anyone, he’d have already hurt Yuki, and she seems to like him a lot, so I don’t think that’s the case. And besides that, he’s still just a boy. We’re grown alphas – I’m not as weak as I used to be, in case you forgot.”

“I guess,” Sayuri said, and seemed willing to let the subject go for now, though she still flicked her tail this way and that in unspoken annoyance.

“So,” Shizuku said after a beat of tense silence, “how did Yumi’s appointment go, Kiyoko-chan? I haven’t seen her at all since you got back.”

“Oh…” Kiyoko’s ears drooped down and her tail fell limp, and she seemed reluctant to answer. “She’s… not happy. I mean, I think she’s just overwhelmed. It’s a big deal, but… well, not completely unexpected, I suppose.”

“So she _is_ pregnant,” Sayuri said. “How far along?”

“How far do you think?” Kiyoko asked, and whipped her tail against Sayuri’s. “Nearly three months.”

The other alphas all nodded sympathetically. Yumi had quite a dark history with matters of sex and otherwise intimate acts, and while at this point she’d had many more happy years than painful ones, the phantoms of her early cubhood still haunted her in some ways. It was understandable, then, that she might object to a pregnancy; a new and tiny cub taking root in her belly and growing there was, to her, a severe violation of the autonomy her adoptive parents had fostered in her and which she treasured above all else.

“I’m sure she’ll warm up once she gets to see the first ultrasound,” Setsuna assured the younger alpha as they returned to the house. “Just let me or Kasumi know if you need any help or any advice, okay?”

“Thanks, Setsuna.”

The alphas filed back into their family home, which now smelled pleasantly like dinner. There was still no sign of Kensuke, though; there hadn’t even been any passing cars or people while they were out marking up their property. Yuki was growing ever more anxious, and it was hard to tell if it was due to Kensuke’s absence or his imminent arrival. A couple of pings from her phone gave her a start, and she quickly opened up the messages.

“Oh…”

Kasumi, who was busy setting the table with Kiyoko, immediately picked up on her daughter’s disappointed tone. “What is it?” she asked.

“Kensuke said he’s not gonna be able to make it,” Yuki said, her still-fuzzy ears twitching. “He said he got called in to work… But he also said he’d be willing to meet up for lunch someplace tomorrow. Is that okay, Mama?”

The news was not pleasing to the mother omega. She shook her head at the meal now spread out on the table – the foods she chose today were more traditional in nature, as she wasn’t sure what Kensuke liked to eat. “I made all this food…” she grumbled. “We can meet with him tomorrow at noon, I guess… You choose the place, Yuki-chan. But! You tell him he _better_ show up on time – I’m not exactly impressed at getting ditched last-minute like this.”

There was a rapid series of taps on her phone, and Yuki had sent off the (no doubt much more friendly) message to her mate.

“Well, Yumi might want to join us now,” Kiyoko said as the pack gathered around the table. “I’ll go see how she’s feeling.”

She found Yumi at the desk in their bedroom, scribbling away in a notebook. She’d been taking advantages of the benefits of journaling since cubhood, when it was first suggested to her by her therapist. She’d since gone through well over a dozen notebooks, in which she wrote about life events, her thoughts on any number of topics, creative stories, and sometimes she even made drawings. Some of these entries she shared with Kiyoko, and the alpha was always happy to get a little more insight into her mate’s often-complicated inner emotions. Today, however, Yumi closed the book at the sight of Kiyoko.

“Yuki’s boyfriend can’t make it to dinner,” Kiyoko said. “You can come down and eat with us, it’s okay. Or… do you want me to bring a plate up?”

“Let’s eat together in here,” Yumi suggested. “I don’t want to talk to anyone else right now.”

So Kiyoko went down and made up two plates for them, all the while explaining to the other members of the pack that the pair of them needed some private time. The alphas all understood (as they’d already been told the news), and the omegas, particularly Kasumi, had their suspicions about what had happened. When Kiyoko brought their food up, she found Yumi had laid an old box in the floor to serve as a table.

“How are you feeling?” Kiyoko asked as they settled together at the box-table.

The hard iciness had gone from Yumi’s eyes, replaced now with a pensive sort of gloom. That still was a far cry from the well of joy that bubbled up from Kiyoko’s heart upon discovering that she was to be a father. Her delight now was tempered only by her mate’s worrisome reluctance.

“I just don’t think I want to be a mother,” Yumi said after a time. “I don’t think I can be one, Kiyoko.”

Kiyoko wrinkled her brow at those soft, yet hurtful words. “But why not?” she asked, rubbing a gentle hand along her omega’s back. “That cub is made from you and me. It’s _ours_.”

“I know that,” Yumi said. “That’s not the issue here. It’s just that… Children require so _much_. I don’t think I can give that to them. I wouldn’t be suitable as a mother, Kiyoko, I’ve just got… too much going on. I could never forgive myself if I hurt them.”

“We won’t be doing it alone,” Kiyoko said. “We’ve got the whole pack to support us. I know you’re still in school, and I want you to finish your degree, but we can still make this work. Please?”

Yumi heaved a great sigh. The thinly-veiled desperation in her wife’s voice was breaking her heart, and yet still she couldn’t bear the thought of suffering through pregnancy and childbirth and raising a cub – it was too much. She wasn’t cut out for it. “You wouldn’t understand how I feel about this,” she said. “You were born into a normal family who loved you, but I wasn’t.”

“So why wouldn’t you want to give your own cub a normal, loving family?” Kiyoko pressed her. “There’s no need to pass on your pain. Besides, you have You and Chika and all of Aqours as your family. And Muse, too. Your father is dead, Yumi – we can raise the cub our way.”

Yumi sighed softly. Her father was indeed dead, gone for many years, and that much was a relief. But, dead as she was, her horrific actions had left a hideous and permanent mark on the psyche of her daughter, as evidenced most strongly when it came to matters of sex. Yumi loved Kiyoko dearly, and mating with her was pleasurable more often than not, but they’d taken a long and difficult road to reach the point of freely making love. The memory of Naoko’s repeated violations of her innocence was one too difficult to shake completely, and even now Yumi sometimes had to put off sex until a later, more clear-minded time.

“It’s not that simple, Kiyoko,” Yumi said, and frowned at Kiyoko’s perplexed expression. She didn’t expect her mate to understand her reluctance to become a parent; Kiyoko had been born to parents who loved her, who supported her, who would die for her, and that upstanding blood was in Kiyoko’s veins, and it showed. Yumi, meanwhile, was raised by adoptive parents in the Aqours pack, and while she was eternally grateful to them for providing her with a normal cubhood and a stable, loving support system, she was also depressingly aware that she did not share their blood. Her real father was a killer, a rapist, a trickster and a narcissist, and Yumi’s greatest fear was damaging her cub the same way Naoko had once damaged her.

 

The thumping was getting old. Despite Karin providing Miyu with a multitude of kid-friendly backseat activities, from video games to coloring books to toys and movie players, the cub seemed to derive the most enjoyment from kicking at the back of her poor Mommy’s seat. Thump, thump, thump, all the way down the highway, and with another hour still left of their trip, Karin was ready to snap.

“Miyu!” she snarled, and got a good, fierce look at the cub through her rearview mirror. “I told you already to stop kicking my seat!”

“But it’s _fun_!” the insolent little cub insisted, and gave the seat a few hearty kicks just to watch Karin’s face turn to fury.

“It is _not_ fun,” Karin said. “If you don’t stop that right now I’ll tell Nonna, and she won’t want to take you horseback riding after that!”

“Yes she will!” Miyu replied. “Nonna loves me!”

“I love you, too, but I don’t love the way you’re acting!”

No amount of back-and-forth could persuade the rude baby alpha, and so Karin endured the kicking and the thumping and the maddening little giggles until they were perhaps a half hour away from their destination. It was then that Miyu announced that she needed the toilet, and quickly, so Karin pulled off the highway and stopped at the first decent-looking convenience store she could find. That was a mistake, of course, because convenience stores are built on the power of impulse buys, and impulse buys are fueled by bright, colorful packaging and tantalizing presentation – all things that children loved. Karin watched helplessly as her previously desperate-to-potty cub bolted to the first aisle full of candy and snacks and began to paw through it all.

“Look how much stuff they have, Mommy!”

“They do have a lot of stuff,” Karin said, shaking her head at all the sweets and chips Miyu would no doubt be begging for in the next few minutes. “But we came here to use the bathroom, right? Come on, let’s go find it.”

“I just want to look, Mom,” Miyu said as she turned a few packages over in her hands.

“Potty first,” Karin said, and took the cub by the hand, leading her to the corner, where the lone restroom awaited. Miyu whined loudly, but, to Karin’s relief, she didn’t put up much resistance.

“I’ll wait for you out here,” Karin said, and shut Miyu in the single toilet to do her business.

A beta woman with a little girl approached not long afterward, and Karin greeted them with a polite nod.

“My daughter is inside,” she explained.

The betas were understanding, and so the three of them waited there in silence for Miyu to finish up. It was several minutes later, when Miyu still hadn’t come out and the little beta girl was beginning to tug at her mother’s sleeve, that Karin decided to knock.

“Miyu-chan, are you almost done?” she asked through the door. “There’s someone waiting in line.”

“Almost!” came Miyu’s voice, followed by the sound of running water.

The door came open not long after that, and Miyu emerged with a great big smile on her face. She took Karin’s hand and pulled her eagerly back towards the sales floor, where the tempting treats were waiting for her. Karin, however, caught scent of something she shouldn’t have, and a gasp of surprise from the beta woman behind her confirmed her suspicions.

Karin turned to the still-open bathroom door and found that the white tile inside was covered in droplets and tiny puddles of yellow, mostly along the walls and surrounding the toilet. The beta woman looked absolutely appalled, and Karin was appalled, too, but not nearly so much as she was embarrassed. At least the betas couldn’t smell the cub’s crimes as easily.

“Miyu Ayase!”

Miyu knew she’d been found out, and instantly took off, leaving her mother with the choice to either clean the offending piss up or chase after her. Karin hesitated, torn between being a decent person and cleaning up after her cub so that the beta child could comfortably use the restroom, and being a responsible parent and reining her daughter in. In the end, keeping her unruly cub out of harm’s way took priority, and she bowed a quick apology to the beta mother before running after Miyu.

“I’m so sorry!”

She found her little alpha munching away at some meat snacks, and quickly snatched the food from her hands. Miyu growled and showed her little claws, but Karin wasn’t afraid of baby cubs, and began to drag the furious child up to the front counter.

“We have to pay for this now because you opened it,” Karin said, and offered the open bag of jerky for the clerk to scan.

Miyu jerked her hand out of her mother’s grasp with a snarl, and moved swiftly to the back of the store, where the drink coolers were located. Just the sound of her pursuing mother’s shoes against the linoleum sent angry vibrations through her body, and her fur forced itself through her skin. When Karin appeared around the corner, Miyu met her with the fiercest roar she could muster as a five year-old cub, and began to sling the cooler doors open to keep the older alpha away.

“Miyu, stop it!” Karin shouted, flinching each time the glass doors swung at her face. Her own fur was beginning to show on her cheeks, and her fingernails were already stiffening and sharpening into claws. “Get over here, now! Or else we’re going straight home!”

Miyu soon backed herself into the wall and ran out of cooler doors to fling at her mother. The idea of heading right back home without even seeing any of her grandparents only heightened her rage, but rather than running away, this time she latched onto her mother, assaulting her with tiny claws and fangs and leaving thin rips in her jacket.

“Stop!” Karin demanded, and shoved the cub away to hold her by the wrists at arm’s length. Miyu writhed and snarled and kicked and stomped her little feet, and Karin was at a loss of what to do next. She barely even understood why Miyu was having such a violent fit in the first place, but she was left to somehow calm the cub on her own.

With the piss-covered restroom and the open pack of jerky forgotten, Karin wrestled her little cub out into the parking lot, trying desperately to ignore the judgmental stares of the people passing by. Miyu fought her all the way, twisting furiously in her mother’s grip and roaring like a baby hell-fiend. Removing her from the store was one thing, but packing the enraged cub back into her booster seat was a task in itself, and Karin struggled against Miyu’s raking claws and well-aimed feet.

Even once Miyu was strapped in and secure, she continued to fuss and thrash, and Karin was at her wit’s end.

“ _Why_ are you acting like this?!” Karin finally screamed, her voice cracking into that of a beast. “All I wanted to do was take you on a nice trip and you’re _ruining_ it before we’re even there!”

Karin slammed the car door shut, and Miyu was stunned into silence, but only for a moment. Her mother’s harsh words pricked at her heart like a venomous stinger, and she began to wail in that awful half-animal way. Karin threw herself into the driver’s seat and turned the key, but she didn’t have the energy to take off just yet. Her frustrations with her daughter were at an all-time high, and, coupled with the guilt of her actions and the hurt little cub’s cries, she couldn’t bring herself to do much more than lean on the steering wheel and sob herself.

In that moment, Karin was certain that she was a failure as a parent. How on earth could she have snapped at her own child like that, and then had the nerve to cry about it, too? But Miyu never listened to her – with the pair of them it was always yelling and fighting over the most trivial of things, and at the drop of a hat. Ai never lost control with Miyu, and Kasumi and Setsuna never had issues with their own cubs, so what was it about Karin that made her unable to perform the simple task of keeping her cub safe and well-behaved?

A tap on her window drew her out of her thoughts. She looked up, and a man wearing a concerned expression was standing there. Karin rubbed quickly at her still-leaking eyes and tried to regain her composure before she rolled down the window. When she did, she realized by the man’s scent that he was an omega.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I’m not trying to be nosy, but I noticed you and your cub inside the store, and I saw you crying here,” the man said. “I just wanted to make sure everything was okay.”

Karin was thankful that Miyu was finally calm and quiet (she was most likely too busy being perplexed by the concept of a male omega to cry any more). “Everything’s okay,” Karin said, though she wasn’t quite certain of it. “I appreciate your concern.”

The omega man passed a brown paper bag bearing the convenience store’s seal into Karin’s hands. “Stay strong,” he said. “I know what it’s like to have alpha cubs that little, but it gets better. Wish you well.”

He then went on his way, leaving the surprised Karin to open up the bag. It was a simple gesture, but a warm one – two doughnuts, one for mother and one for cub. Karin turned around to look at Miyu, who also seemed interested in the bag, but whose face turned to a distrustful scowl when Karin met her eyes.

“That nice man brought doughnuts for us,” Karin said, and handed one to the cub.

Miyu took the treat silently, and ate it without comment. Karin sighed and ate hers, as well, and once they were finished, she felt at least little more ready to tackle the last stretch of their trip to Akihabara.

 

Setsuna slept late the following morning. Normally she was up before the sun, tending to her own pre-work duties before the cubs awoke, and when they did, she helped Kasumi get them all dressed and groomed and fed before sending them off to school and herself off to work. Today was Saturday, though, and there was neither work for Setsuna nor school for the cubs, so Kasumi let her alpha sleep to her heart’s content… to a point, anyway.

It was a quarter till 11 when she finally came to shake her exhausted mate awake. Setsuna groaned and rolled onto her back, smacking her lips and peering up at Kasumi through barely-opened lids.

“What time is it?” she asked, her voice deep and crackly with sleep.

“It’s almost 11 now,” Kasumi said. “You’ve gotta get up now or we’ll be late to lunch.”

Setsuna sighed and let her eyes flutter shut again. She’d been sleeping so soundly she’d nearly forgotten about their lunch meeting with Yuki’s boyfriend. Oh, how she hated those words – Yuki’s boyfriend – but she forced herself to adopt Kasumi’s outlook and trust in her cub’s choices. She finally pushed herself upright after one final, mighty stretch, and decided that she was unusually musky and her hair needed fixing, so she gathered some fresh clothes and headed to the shower.

Downstairs, Sayuri was cleaning up the living area with little Haruka “helping” at her feet. Nearby, Ai was seated on the sofa beside a very pale, jittery, and lightly furred Yuki, with one hand patting the cub’s back gently and rhythmically.

“Easy, easy,” Ai was saying as Kasumi came down the stairs. “I’m sure things will turn out for the best! Think of it this way – if you guys started getting serious and wanted to stay together, your parents would’ve had to meet him anyway. So this is just moving things along in the right direction!”

“I just don’t know if they’ll approve,” Yuki replied. Her ears twitched when she caught sight and scent of Kasumi. “Mama!”

“Papa’s getting ready now,” Kasumi said, and went to plant a kiss on her anxious cub’s head. “We’ll leave in about thirty minutes.”

Yuki spent those thirty minutes breathing deeply and evenly in a failed attempt to soothe the butterflies flapping up a storm in her belly, and if she wasn’t doing that, she was obsessively checking her phone for messages from Kensuke. Even once they left the house, she felt as though her heart might burst at any moment, so fiercely was it pounding at her chest. Her parents seemed relaxed enough at least, with Papa humming along quietly to the radio and Mama staring out at the sunny autumn day passing them by.

The cafe they chose for lunch was a laid-back, casual one, nothing upscale or uptight. Once they were seated and settled with drinks, Yuki began to sip nervously at hers, all the while glancing at the door and at the large windows that faced the sidewalk.

“You look pretty today, baby girl,” Setsuna said. She took a few tentative sips of her coffee, and then asked, “What is it you’re so nervous about?”

Yuki didn’t know how to answer the question. This shouldn’t have even been happening in the first place – her parents weren’t meant to ever find out about her secret boyfriend, the alpha who made her feel so loved and so desired, in such a manner she’d only ever read about in stories. They would never approve of him, and they’d never understand exactly the way she felt about him, and Yuki was quite certain of this.

“It’s because she takes after you,” Kasumi said, and gave Setsuna a playful swat. “So, come on, Yuki-chan, tell us more about him before he gets here! Where’d you meet? Is he handsome?”

“H-he’s handsome…” Yuki replied timidly. “He, um… He has a car, too.”

“A car, huh?” Kasumi laughed, but then she paused, gears turning rapidly in her head. “…Wait, how does he have a car? How old is this kid, anyway?”

“He’s, uh…”

The chimes at the front door jingled, signaling the arrival of a new diner. Almost immediately afterward, Setsuna and Kasumi caught the overwhelmingly offensive scent of an alpha male, and their furs burst in and stood on end in incredible alarm. At once they whirled around and identified the source of the pungent musk – a sharp-dressed alpha man perhaps in his thirties, around their age, who was coming straight for their table.

Setsuna couldn’t take it. A thunderous warning growl rumbled deep in her throat, and she rose up from her seat, using her own body to block access to both Kasumi and Yuki, her claws and fangs on frightening display. Kasumi, too, despite being shielded by Setsuna, was fully shifted, snarling, and poised to strike at any moment.

The deep, bellowing snarl that the alpha man delivered in reply was fearsome, indeed, but Setsuna didn’t dare back down, not when her mate and her cub were here. The most primal parts of her were practically on fire, screaming at her to fight, to defend her family and drive this threatening alpha away, or, preferably, into the ground. The only thing that held her back from launching a full-on assault on the man was a timid tug at the back of her shirt.

“Papa, don’t,” Yuki said. “Please don’t. This… This is Kensuke.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a lot going on but i can rest easy now knowing the action has finally begun
> 
> leave me a hot comment, give me life, tell me what you're thinking


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this took forever, i went on vacation tho so i have somewhat of an excuse.. otherwise it was just writer's block i guess

The sheets were fresh, the shelves dusted, the trash taken out, and the carpet vacuumed. Leah stood back and admired her work, hands on her hips and ever-so-slight sheen of sweat on her forehead. Eradicating the lingering scent of sex musk and alcohol from her bedroom was a considerable task for Leah, but she did it week after week, and all because her beloved omega daughter came to visit on the weekends, and her daughter didn’t deserve to sleep on the couch. Sweet Emma’s visits were the highlight of Leah’s very existence, a light in the darkness so to speak, and Leah much preferred spending innocent time with her over her usual mid-week hookups which left her cock satisfied but her heart hollow.

Dia, too, enjoyed Emma’s weekend visits, not just because Emma was her niece, but also because the stench of Leah’s room was lessened for at least a few days. She popped her head around Leah’s doorway and gave the air a few sniffs of approval.

“Good job, Leah,” she said. “I can only imagine what it might smell like if you had full custody!”

“Shut up,” Leah grumbled, and began to roll the vacuum towards Dia, forcing her from the room.

“I’m serious,” Dia said. “Don’t you think Emma would be disappointed to know what a slob you are during the rest of the week? I’m just saying, sobriety and showering suit you. You might even find a nice omega to settle down with like that!”

“Didn’t I tell you to shut it?” Leah snapped, and slammed the vacuum back into the tight hall closet.

“Settle down, you two,” Sarah called from the kitchen. Something was sizzling, and the aroma of well-seasoned steak began to drift through the apartment.

Leah huffed, but the let the matter drop. Three alphas living in a small apartment sometimes created an intense environment, especially with Dia nagging all the time, but, reluctant as Leah was to admit it, Dia’s words only stung because they held some truth. Leah knew full well she wasn’t doing herself any favors by searching for human connection at the bars and the clubs full of giggling just-barely-women, or at the street corner where the less savory types liked to reel in their night’s catch. And yet, hardly anybody was interested in getting to know an aging grey alpha beyond their interest in taking an experienced cock, which only fueled Leah’s loneliness.

“Since you’re on such a roll, why don’t you take the rest of our clothes down to the laundromat with your sheets?” Dia suggested. “I’m tired from running errands all morning, and you need to do more work around here, anyway.”

“Whatever,” was Leah’s sour reply, though she still bagged up the dirty clothes and carried them down with her sheets to the apartment building’s in-house laundromat.

Dia preferred dye-free and scentless detergent, which Leah found incredibly boring when there were so many interesting scents available, like tropical orange or moonlight purple (whatever that was supposed to be). But Dia did far more of the trio’s laundry than Leah really cared to admit, so she supposed Dia had a right to choose her own favorite detergent, but it still would have been nice to have her sheets come out smelling like an island getaway.

There was just one other person in the laundromat, and it was a woman Leah had never seen before. She was a beta, one who was perhaps pushing fifty, and who was seemingly of good taste, given the bottle of tropical detergent in her hands. Her face wasn’t a happy one, however, and while Leah usually liked to mind her own business, she couldn’t help but notice that the beta was unhappy because her detergent had run all out. She held the bottle completely upside-down over the cap, but only a thin string of it came briefly down, followed by a tiny drop, and then nothing.

Leah couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. If she was that upset about running out of laundry detergent, she imagined this woman must have some serious shit going down in other areas of her life. Leah quickly loaded up the washer with her sheets, then, in a bout of unusual kindness, edged closer to the beta.

“Hey,” she said, “I’ve, uh, got a little extra detergent. If you need some…” She presented the bottle to the woman as nonchalantly as possible.

“Oh… Thank you!” the woman said, and timidly took the bottle from Leah’s hands. “Are you sure, though? I know it’s expensive…”

“It’s nothing,” Leah replied, and then, after a beat of silence, asked, “Are you new around here? I’ve never seen you before.”

“I only moved in two nights ago,” the woman said. “I’m just trying to get everything together right now. It’s been tough.”

“I see.” Leah didn’t know quite what else to say after that, and she certainly didn’t want to pry into this stranger’s life, so she decided to wrap up the interaction. She’d done her good deed, and now it was time to pick up Emma. “Well, hope things look up for you. This is a pretty good area, there’s lots to do. But, uh, yeah, I’ve got to get going now, so…”

That was that, and Leah left to set off for her car. It was a little past noon now, and Emma was surely growing impatient; they had agreed to go for ice cream just as soon as Leah picked her up. Thoughts of her daughter always put Leah in a good mood, and she was so caught up in those fatherly daydreams that she’d nearly forgotten about her awkward encounter with the beta… that is, until she was halfway to the Aqours house and realized that she’d left Dia’s detergent with the woman!

_Dia’s gonna kill me_ , she thought, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. Either the woman was honest to a fault and left the detergent to likely be stolen by some other sly fuck, or she took it home with her as a surprise gift from a stranger. Leah would just have to stop at the store after taking Emma to get her ice cream.

“Leah!”

It was Kanan who answered the door. Leah had always found the large and musky Kanan to be quite an imposing alpha, but there was a lightness in her voice and a warmth in her smile today that Leah didn’t usually find directed at her. As she stepped inside, she realized quickly that she wasn’t the cause of the warmth at all; the little alpha Miyu, Kanan’s granddaughter, was wrapped around Kanan’s leg, gnawing contentedly at the older alpha’s belt loop. Leah bit back a grimace.

“You sure are getting big, Miyu,” Leah said politely. The cub was sweet for her grandparents, sure, but Leah had seen firsthand the kind of unholy destruction little Miyu could wreak if she wanted. “You take after your father.”

“And my Stinky,” Miyu replied with a grin.

Emma came bounding out from the kitchen at the sound of her papa’s voice, and threw herself headlong into Leah’s arms. Leah caught her and held her tight, sharing scents with her and peppering her face and her hair with kisses.

“Papa, I missed you!” Emma cried, and then stepped back with a giggle. “And you’re late! We’re still getting ice cream, right?”

“Of course we are,” Leah said. “We always do, don’t we?”

Ruby came down the stairs then, looking rather irritated for someone usually so timid and reserved. “Emma,” she said, “I told you you need to wear your coat.”

“But Mama!” Emma whined. “I’m wearing my new outfit today! No one will be able to see it if I wear my coat!” She turned back to Leah and twirled cutely, showing off her fine new blouse and billowing blue skirt. “Do you like it, Papa?”

Leah sighed. She looked adorable, very much so, but Leah was careful not to undermine Ruby’s authority too much. Their Emma was fifteen years old, and very quickly maturing in some ways, but in other ways she still retained some of her cubbish mannerisms. One of those mannerisms was the one with which she spoke to her mother, Ruby. There was no doubt that Emma loved Ruby deeply, and Hanamaru, too, but the cub sometimes felt suffocated by the perceived restrictions on her dress and on her behavior.

“It looks very cute,” Leah told her, “but your Mama’s right. It’s chilly out and you don’t need to be catching a cold. Understand?”

Emma couldn’t very well argue if both Mama _and_ Papa insisted she wear a coat, so she reluctantly pulled hers on. She kissed Ruby goodbye for the weekend, and went to the car arm-in-arm with Leah.

“You should mind your mother more,” Leah said once they were comfortably strapped in and driving away. “Just saying.”

“I just wanted to show off my outfit,” Emma said. “Mama always smothers me.”

Leah thought her eyes might roll right on out of her head. “You’re not smothered,” she said. “Hardly! You’ve got everything you could ever want, and a safe home to grow up in, too. Mama only asks you to do certain things for your safety.” Gods above, she was starting to sound like Dia. “I mean, it _is_ cold outside today. Right?”

Emma pouted stubbornly, but she eventually did agree, and Leah couldn’t help but smirk. Oh, this was her cub, alright.

By the time they pulled up to their usual ice cream spot, Emma was already back into her typical bubbly spirits, the injustice at being forced to wear a coat on a cold day forgotten. She liked to get chocolate chip most of the time, but today she chose a wildly-colored sherbet, and Leah thought it suited her. Leah herself preferred strawberry.

“We’ve gotta stop by the store on the way home,” Leah said. “I lent some laundry detergent to a beta lady who didn’t have any, but I forgot to get it back from her. You know Dia will kill me if I don’t get more.”

Emma chuckled at that. “Aunt Dia is very… particular,” she said. “But it was nice of you to help a beta, Papa! I have some beta friends at school, you know. They’re so funny!”

“Oh yeah? What’s so funny about them?” Leah asked, though she knew perfectly well all the things that were funny about betas.

“Well, everything, really!” Emma replied. “They don’t know how to share scents at all, and their own scent has a funny smell, too… Actually, they can’t even smell the scents, can they? That’s so weird! I don’t know, there’s just so much about them that’s different that I can’t figure out. I’m glad I was born a shifter, though – everything seems a lot easier for us!”

Leah suddenly seemed to remember that they were in public, and glanced around to ensure that there weren’t any nosy eavesdroppers nearby getting offended at their conversation. “Well, I’m glad you’re glad,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been able to have you if we weren’t shifters.”

Emma agreed, and her laughter that followed was girlish and delicate, much like her mother Ruby’s had been in her youth. Leah’s heart soared at the sound of it. For all her woes about life and about love, Leah forever took pride in her alphahood and the opportunity it had given her not just to live differently and apart from betas, but to father a cub so darling as Emma.

There was a general store not far from the ice cream shop, so, once they had their fill of their creamy treat, the pair of them decided to walk there. Emma was animated the entire way, laughing and chattering and twirling and skipping all around, and Leah couldn’t help but envy her youthful energy. Hell, Leah could barely get out of bed now without feeling her bones creaking, and her guts surely didn’t thank her for her heavy intake of alcohol and junk food. Dia’s words echoed in her mind – _Don’t you think Emma would be disappointed to know what a slob you are?_ – and she very begrudgingly had to agree.

“Can we get some chocolate, Papa?” Emma asked when she saw the display stuffed full with sweets.

“Didn’t we just get ice cream?” was _going_ to be Leah’s reply, but it was the puppy-dog eyes that always did her in, and she found herself agreeing to the chocolate before she even knew what hit her.

“Let’s hurry back,” Leah said, fearful now of spending more than intended.

They found Dia’s preferred detergent quickly enough, and when they got in line for the checkout, Leah was met with quite a surprise!

“Oh, it’s you!” the woman behind the counter cried. It was none other than the beta that Leah had helped earlier. “I-I didn’t expect to see you here! I, uh, I work at a dental office most of the time, but I work here on the weekends. You know, just to make ends meet…”

Leah didn’t understand why the woman was getting so flustered or why she felt the need to explain her job away. “Well, that’s pretty tough of you,” she said. “Working two jobs, I mean. I can barely manage one!”

The pair shared a laugh at that, the sort of polite chuckling that tends to accompany such small talk. Afterward, the beta woman seemed to finally notice what Leah was buying, and she flushed with embarrassment.

“Oh dear! Please, please don’t think I stole your detergent from you!” she said. “You left so quickly that I wasn’t sure what to do, so I left it for you by the washer you were using. Surely it’s still there?”

Leah couldn’t help but smile at that. So the woman really was the honest type. “You should’ve just kept it,” she said, a touch of humor in her voice. “It’s probably gone by now – you’ll come to know there are some selfish fuckers who live on the third floor – but it’s alright.” She paid and collected her change, but passed the bottle and the receipt back over the counter to the beta. “Just keep this one instead.”

Leah turned away from the once-again-surprised woman, intending to leave without another word like some sort of badass good samaritan, but then the beta called out to her.

“Wait, please! You don’t have to do this for me,” she said, her cheeks still rosy and her eyes shifting this way and that. “I can’t accept this from a total stranger! That’s too much, it’s too much…”

“It’s not much,” Leah replied. “Just… you know, consider it a welcome gift.”

The beta at last met Leah’s eyes. “Well, I really thank you,” she said. “That’s the kindest anyone’s been to me all week. What was your name?”

Leah blinked, clearly taken aback. She hadn’t been expecting that question. “Leah Kazuno,” she said quickly when she saw that the beta was turning her eyes away again. “Er, just Leah is fine, though. Hate being called Kazuno-san.”

“I’m Himeno,” the beta said, and gave a polite bow. “Thank you again, Leah. I’ve got to get back to work now, so…”

“No problem,” Leah said. “Catch you later, then.”

During the walk back to the car, Emma was all giggles and nudges and sly smiles. Leah at last became fed up with her cub’s annoying behavior and gave her a shove.

“What are you grinning at, you stinky cub?” she asked.

“I’ve never seen you be so nice to a stranger before!” Emma said. “I could sense your scent changing a little bit, too. You think she’s _pretty_ , don’t you, Papa?”

Leah played at swatting Emma with her claws. “Don’t be ridiculous – she’s a beta!” she said, though what her cub didn’t know was that Leah had slept with her fair share of betas before, and found many of them to be delightful lovers. Perhaps betas weren’t as fierce or as strong or as passionate as omegas, but they had their place, and Leah could appreciate that. But a beta falling in love with her over a bottle of laundry detergent? Yeah, right!

 

Burning hot alpha fury pulsed through Setsuna’s body, thrusting all her instincts into high alert and screaming at her to act, to roar and to slash and to rip the throat from this disgustingly predatory alpha. The one thing that held her back was the trembling claw that gripped the back of her shirt – the claw belonging to the very cub this man had defiled.

“Please don’t hurt him,” Yuki begged, her voice quavering. “Please, Papa.”

Across the table from Yuki, Kasumi was half-standing with her furs all on end, her body tense and poised to strike out at Kensuke alongside her mate. Never in her life had she seen or heard Setsuna react so severely to anyone or anything, and it was honestly frightening. The male alpha stood firm, baring his fangs and showing his claws in response to Setsuna’s gestures, but neither made a move. Kasumi’s heart thudded crazily in her chest as the seconds ticked by, the tension hanging thick.

To Yuki’s dismay (and Kasumi’s, but for a different reason), Setsuna began to advance slowly on Kensuke, chest heaving and deep growls rumbling in her throat. She fearlessly prodded the man’s chest with her claw, and when she spoke, her voice was horrible beyond recognition.

“If you _ever_ come near my daughter again, I won’t hesitate to tear your guts out.”

Quite a bold statement from the normally shy, passive Setsuna, and for that reason alone Kasumi knew she meant every word. Kensuke furrowed his brow, though his face was otherwise unreadable, and he glanced quickly at Yuki, then back to Setsuna.

“Fine,” he replied, and began to back away, his eyes never leaving Setsuna’s.

Setsuna followed him every step of the way, and when they reached the diner’s entrance, Setsuna barked and snapped abruptly at him, giving everyone in the room a jolt – Kensuke most of all – and she chased him from the premises. Yuki was sobbing almost instantly, clutching at her chest and dropping her head down to the table. Kasumi was all too aware of the fear and the panic and the overall discomfort that had been slowly rising in the little restaurant, and she knew for certain that they were no longer welcome. Quickly, she yanked Yuki up from the table and ushered her out to the car.

“She ruined it!” Yuki cried when they were at last in the privacy of the family car. “Papa ruined everything! Papa- Papa-” Her throat convulsed and a great sob escaped.

“Easy, easy!” Kasumi urged her from the front seat. “Just calm down now. Papa only wants to protect you, you know that.”

Yuki continued to sniffle and cry all the way up until her father returned. Setsuna was still shifted, but she was much more herself, with her fur now laying flat and her fangs no longer on display. She was silent, but not really for lack of things to say; there was _much_ to be said, too much to cover in the span of a short car ride, so she let Yuki cry and Kasumi stew and she drove them home quietly.

Ai and Sayuri were seated on the couch, catching up over some daytime TV, all the while Kanata dozed on the other couch and Haruka and Emi played together on the floor. All present could sense the incredible tension as soon as Setsuna and her mate and cub came through the door, and Sayuri jumped immediately into action.

“What’s going on?” she demanded of Setsuna. “What happened?” 

Yuki didn’t even bother excusing herself, and tore up the stairs to her room, fur showing on her skin. Setsuna and Kasumi exchanged a look before replying to the impatient Sayuri.

“It’s… It’s a lot to take in,” Setsuna said, and took a slow, deep breath to keep herself from shifting again at the mere thought of it. “Oh, god…”

The couple made their way over to the couch, where Ai made room for both of them to sit. Setsuna continued to take even breaths while Kasumi rubbed her back gently. Neither of them seemed quite ready to speak, but the charge in the air had the young cubs on edge. Emi crept forward, frightened at the sight of the tears in her papa’s eyes.

“What’s wrong, Papa?” she asked, the tips of her dark fur beginning to show on her little face. “Mama?”

Kasumi softened and scooped the tiny alpha up into her lap. “It’s okay, Emi,” she said, and placed a kiss onto the little one’s forehead. “Wanna help Mama make a snack?”

Emi shook her head. “What happened to Papa?” she asked, insistent on the truth.

“Well…” Kasumi shared a brief glance with Setsuna, then stood, bringing the baby alpha up with her. “A bad man hurt Papa’s feelings, that’s all. Let’s leave her alone for a while so she’ll feel better, alright? Now come on, I’ve got a cucumber in here we can slice up…”

Once Kasumi had carried away the still-worried Emi, and Kanata had taken Haruka to join them, Sayuri and Ai turned their full attention back to the sniveling Setsuna.

“Tell me what happened,” Sayuri said sternly.

Setsuna took a few great, shuddering breaths before replying at last. “Yuki’s boyfriend isn’t a boy at all,” she said, her voice thin. “He’s a man. A… A grown alpha. A grown alpha with my Yuki…!”

“A grown man?” Black fur began to rise along Sayuri’s arms, and she grabbed Setsuna by the collar, snarling hot into her face. “I told you, Setsuna, I _told_ you! You gave this fucking pedo guy our address! He knows where we live! He knows where we fucking live!”

Ai felt her body begin to shift as well, and the baby in her lap began to whimper with fear at Sayuri’s outburst. Acting mostly on impulse, Ai stood and pushed Sayuri back from Setsuna with her free hand, and while that did nothing to loosen the fuming alpha’s claws from Setsuna’s collar, it at least caused her to think twice about attacking head-on.

“Back off, Sayuri,” Ai said. “Fighting is _not_ gonna help!”

“Well, she should’ve known better!” Sayuri snapped back. “She should never have trusted some alpha guy, even if he was Yuki’s boyfriend! Now she’s put my cubs in danger, and yours, and – hell, everyone’s cubs! And her own daughter is in even _more_ danger than before!”

Setsuna was trembling, seemingly ready to crack under the pressure of Sayuri’s tirade. She swallowed thickly, searching for the right words with which to reply, but found none that didn’t die in her throat, and instead she was left to whimper helplessly in Sayuri’s grip. Ai came to her defense once more.

“I told you to back off and let her go,” Ai growled, and showed her fangs. Baby Natsumi was crying now, spooked by her mother’s sudden shift from her usual happy-go-lucky demeanor. “I’m not saying you’re wrong about that, but attacking her now isn’t gonna solve anything. Let her _go_. We need to work together right now.”

Sayuri scowled, but she finally obeyed, and released the sweating Setsuna from her claws. Setsuna clutched her now-bunched up collar and bowed her head, desperate to catch her breath and keep herself from shifting further. It was jarring to see Sayuri that upset; the black-furred alpha was usually excitable and endlessly jolly, but the birth of her little omega cub had awakened the incredibly powerful and primal paternal instincts within her, and it was those natural instincts that drove Sayuri to fight with her own packmate now.

“I’m going to need your help,” Setsuna said after an agonizingly long silence. “I’d be happy to see that man punished to the furthest extent of the law, but…”

“Well… I’ll do what I can,” Sayuri said, “but you _know_ how things are. We’re not likely to get far with the police, even if I’m part of the force. We’re better off acting alone, really.”

“I’d still like to file a report,” Setsuna said. “I know it’s better for us to try and catch him by ourselves, but if we can’t do that, then… well, I mean to stop him one way or another.”

“You’ll need evidence in that case,” Sayuri said. “Obviously you have the story, but it’s always good to have physical evidence, as well. Have you checked Yuki-chan’s phone?”

“Way ahead of you,” Kasumi said as she reentered the room. Emi was no longer with her; she’d left the cub in the care of Kanata and with a bowl of sliced cucumbers and apples. “I’ll see if I can get Yuki to even talk to me… Even if she does, I doubt she’ll want to anymore if I have to take her phone away. But what choice do we have? We can’t have that guy contacting her anymore.”

Indeed, what choice _did_ they have? Despite the cub’s insistence on maturity and true love and declarations that “age is just a number,” the reality was that Setsuna and Kasumi’s sweet omega daughter was being preyed upon by an older alpha male, and Yuki’s phone was an active link to the predator. The mere suggestion that it was to be confiscated sent Yuki into a fit.

“Kensuke is _not_ like that, Mama!” Yuki insisted. “He would never hurt me on purpose! He loves me! Don’t you understand that?”

“I understand the situation perfectly well, thanks!” Kasumi replied. “Kensuke is a _grown man_. It is _not_ normal for adults to date cubs half their age! I’m the one who would never hurt you. Now hand over your phone or I’ll take it from you myself.”

Yuki shoved the phone underneath her pillow and growled deep, and Kasumi couldn’t help but think how the cub, with her dark ashen fur flared out and her fangs bared, looked every inch like Setsuna, and secretly she was impressed with the display. But she had to retrieve the phone – the thing that still connected her daughter to that dangerous man – at all costs, and her cub didn’t scare her in the slightest.

There was a brief scuffle as Kasumi advanced on Yuki undeterred. Yuki was desperate to defend her final link to her beloved Kensuke, and came at her mother with jaws gaping and claws swinging. Kasumi retaliated with a series of soft strikes, the tempered sort of blows that parents dealt to their cubs during play fights. She didn’t actually want to hurt Yuki, after all; she simply wanted to stun her into submission.

Her plan worked flawlessly. Yuki staggered back, shocked that her mother had dared to strike out at her own cub, and Kasumi took advantage of the lapse in her assault by quickly shoving her hand beneath the cub’s pillow and grabbing hold of the phone.

“Mama!” Yuki snarled when she realized what had happened.

“I’m sorry for this, Yuki-chan, but I have to do it,” Kasumi said, and shoved the phone down into her pocket. “Until we can be sure that guy isn’t gonna come around anymore, I have to keep your phone.”

She left the naive and heartbroken Yuki to throw a raging, tearful fit, and calmly took herself to her own bedroom, where she secured the phone in her lockbox. Yuki’s anguished crying broke her heart, truly, but the lovestruck little cub didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. Kasumi took a few moments to herself, listening to the muffled sobs from the next room and ruminating on the next course of action.

“We don’t need to be doing anything drastic until Karin gets home,” Ai was saying when Kasumi at last returned to the living room.

“We’ve got plenty of alphas to take care of him,” Sayuri argued. “It’s not like one man is gonna be too much for us.”

“Just because he’s showed up alone every time so far doesn’t mean he _is_ alone,” Ai said. “Don’t you think it’s weird that he even showed himself to Yuki’s parents today? He could have his own pack ready to jump us, you know? You and Karin pack the biggest punch, Sayuri, and I wanna make sure we’ve got all hands on deck if it comes to something like that.”

Sayuri twitched her ears. “I mean, I guess you have a point,” she said. “I still want to patrol the neighborhood tonight, though.”

“I agree,” said Setsuna. She’d finally regained her composure and was sitting tall and determined. “There’s never any harm in updating our markers. But I hadn’t considered that he might have his own pack…”

“I took Yuki’s phone,” Kasumi announced. “He won’t be able to contact her for now, at least, but he’s still got our address. We should probably keep a night watch until we get everything under control.”

Sayuri clenched her fists with a terrible growl. “I swear, if he comes around here, I’ll personally drag his insides through the backyard!”

It was plain just from the fire in Sayuri’s eyes that she meant to make good on her threat, but Setsuna would see to it that it was she herself who ripped Kensuke apart.

 

A nostalgic sort of relief settled over Karin as the passing scenery grew more familiar. She’d been living in the quiet seaside neighborhood of Uchiura for a decade, but Tokyo, she supposed, would always be home in her heart. That sense of homecoming was only heightened as she pulled into her birth pack’s driveway and opened her car door to the familiar scents of the Muse pack’s markers. Honoka, Rin, Nico, and, of course, her father Eli – the presence of the alphas who’d raised Karin was strong, and reawakened in her a firm sense of security that she hadn’t even realized she’d lost.

“Miyu-chan…”

Karin unbuckled the straps of Miyu’s car seat, and the little cub came easily into her arms. “I’m sorry I yelled at you like that,” Karin said, and left a soft kiss in the little one’s hair. “Mommy was just… very frustrated. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Miyu replied, her voice muffled by her mother’s shoulder.

They kissed and shared scents, and when all was forgiven, made their way up to the front porch. Karin knocked, and after a moment, the door came open a crack, and a pair of suspicious yellow eyes peered out at them.

“…Oh, Karin!”

Rin flung the door wide open at the sight of the mother-cub pair, and threw her arms around them with a cry of delight, scenting them both thoroughly.

“Karin, Miyu! Welcome home, welcome home!”

Karin returned Rin’s affections and hugged the older alpha tight, giving her back several hearty thumps. Then, before she knew it, Rin was pulling them both inside where it was warm, and where the timeless aroma of her mother’s cooking still lingered.

“Nozomi, Eli!” Rin called. “We’ve got a surprise visitor!”

Nozomi’s head came first around the doorframe leading to the living room, and when she caught sight and scent of her firstborn cub, she practically threw herself across the room and into the arms of her once-tiny alpha. Karin held her mother like a long-lost treasure, drawing in her gentle, soothing scent and feeling the tension in her frayed alpha nerves begin to melt away. This was a testament to just how powerful the mother-cub bond could be even well into adulthood – after all, Nozomi, who in the past had been an unyielding anchor of security for young Karin, was now small and frail in her daughter’s embrace, and her once-luscious purple locks had all gone to a salt-and-pepper grey. Karin was many orders of magnitude stronger than her mother, and yet, the very scent of her lulled the grown alpha into a cubbish state of ease.

“My little cub, I’ve missed you so much!” Nozomi cried.

“I missed you, too, Mama,” Karin said. She chuckled as Miyu squeezed herself in between them, eager for her share of the attention.

“Hi, Baba!” Miyu said as she clung to Nozomi’s shirt. “Did you miss me, too?”

“Of course I did!” Nozomi replied, and planted a great big kiss on the little cub’s cheek. “Look how big you’re getting! I bet you’re even stronger than the last time I saw you, too!”

“Oh, I bet she is!” Eli stepped into the kitchen, a delighted grin on her face at the sight of her grown alpha cub and her little alpha grandcub. “Let’s hear those roars!”

Miyu sucked in a great breath, and released the most powerful roar she could muster for her grandfather. It came out shrill and scratchy and grating on the ears, but Eli clapped her hands encouragingly.

“Amazing, Miyu-chan!” she said. “Your voice is getting stronger!”

Miyu beamed and puffed up her chest. “I’ve been practicing!”

Once hugs and scents were shared all around, Nozomi was quick to sit Karin and Miyu down at the table and get some food in their bellies. That was something mothers did best, and grandmothers especially so.

“So what brings you back home, little cub?” Nozomi asked while they ate. “Did you just decide to surprise us? How’s Kiyoko? And Ai? And little Natsumi?”

Karin chuckled. “Oh, everyone’s doing fine, Mama,” she said. “Ai’s just getting over the flu now, so I figured it was safe for me to come and spend the weekend with you. I’m also supposed to meet Ryo for dinner tomorrow… Do you remember her?”

“That’s Tsubasa’s girl, right?” Eli said. “I keep in touch with her mother sometimes. Last I heard she was the new director at UTX.”

“That’s her, yeah,” Karin said. “I ran into her at the grocery store the other day. That’s weird, don’t you think? She never even told me what she was doing so far away from Tokyo.”

“Jiji, you wanna fight with me?” Miyu asked suddenly, standing up from her seat and flexing her basically nonexistent muscles. “Let’s fight!”

Miyu sprang at Eli, little claws spread, and Karin made as if to pull her away. “Let’s not do that right now, Miyu,” she urged the cub. “I’m sure Jiji wants to rest. It’s getting late.”

Eli laughed aloud and ruffled the rowdy cub’s hair. “It’s no problem, we can play for a little while,” she said. “It’s too dark outside now, but come on, we can move to the living room!”

Miyu trailed happily after her “jiji,” and not long after the sound of playful snarls and snaps met the ears of the mother and cub left in the kitchen. Nozomi smiled fondly.

“You used to play with Mommy like that, too,” she said. “She’ll be as big as you before you know it, you know. Enjoy these years while they last.”

Karin frowned at that, reflecting on the untold amount of meltdowns Miyu had had recently, and wondered briefly if she ought to ask Nozomi for advice… She stopped herself, though, for fear of seeming incompetent. Nozomi, being herself, picked up on Karin’s unease immediately.

“What’s wrong, little cub?”

Karin shifted awkwardly and moved her uncertain eyes up to meet Nozomi’s. There was no use trying to hide her feelings – her mama had a way of knowing just about everything. “It’s just that I’ve been having trouble with Miyu lately,” she admitted. “She’s… stubborn, and destructive. She never listens to me at all, she’ll just scream and throw fits and fight me any way she can, and if she can’t fight me, then she’ll run. Just the other day she nearly ran into traffic!” She sighed deeply and shook her head. “I worry so much that something will happen to her, or that she’ll grow up badly because of me.”

Nozomi listened closely and nodded along with her daughter’s concerns. “Raising little alphas isn’t easy,” she said. “They have so much energy packed into their little bodies that they don’t know what to do with. It’s important to make sure they can channel that energy in a safe and constructive way.”

“What do you mean by that?” Karin asked.

“I’m saying you need to play with her more, get her outside, and teach her all about being an alpha,” Nozomi replied. “She’ll never be able to control her shifts and her strength unless you show her how, Karin. You have to be confident – you’re her father, and she watches everything you do, even if you don’t realize it.”

Karin knew all of that to be true, but it was the execution that she struggled with. It was hard to be confident with a raging cub and a helpless baby gnawing at her nerves every hour of every day. She loved her children dearly, and indeed it had long been her dream to raise a family with Ai, but sometimes (generally in the midst of one of Miyu’s terrifying fits) she questioned her competence as a parent.

“I’ll just add this, little cub,” Nozomi continued from her place at the sink as she scrubbed Miyu’s plate clean. “Just because you’re a grown alpha now doesn’t mean you can’t still learn from watching your Mommy.”

Karin took the hint, and once she was finished with her food, she crept to the doorway to the living room, and there she found Eli pinned face-down to the rug with little Miyu growling and gnawing at her shoulder. The cub sat up when she spotted Karin, and a fiendish grin spread across her features.

“Mommy!”

She launched herself from Eli’s back (earning her a pained grunt from Eli, which she ignored), and attached herself to Karin. Karin was quick to shift and join their game, and together the three of them tumbled about on the living room floor, snarling and slashing and losing themselves in the most primal of games.

When bedtime finally rolled around, Miyu was all tuckered out, her seemingly boundless energy at last totally depleted. Karin scooped her up from the couch, and was impressed that for once she was met with no resistance as she carried the cub to bed.

“Did Jiji sleep in here with you sometimes?” Miyu asked as she was tucked into Karin’s old bed.

“Sometimes,” Karin said. “But usually I would go sleep with Baba and Jiji in their bed, instead.”

Miyu snuggled down into the blankets and rumbled contentedly as Karin stroked her hair. She didn’t have the energy left to even reply again, and sleep took her out quickly. Karin was delighted with the painlessness of the whole process, and of course with how adorable her little cub looked. She decided then that perhaps mother really did know best, and wondered if she’d be able to replicate this night at home and by herself…

The following day, things were still all smooth sailing with Miyu, much to Karin’s simultaneous surprise and relief. It was after lunch when Miyu begged to be allowed to see her maternal grandparents, as well, so Karin walked her over to the Aqours pack’s home, with Nozomi and Eli accompanying them.

“Nonna!” Miyu cheered when Mari answered the door.

“Oh, Miyu-chan, what a _pleasant surprise_!” Mari cried, and lifted the little cub up to bless both her cheeks with a big kiss. “Kanan, we’ve got company!”

Kanan emerged from the kitchen, and her eyes lit up when she caught sight of her first grandcub. “Miyu, look how big you’re getting!” She took the cub from her wife and cuddled her close.

“Hi, Stinky!” Miyu said, and returned her grandfather’s affections. “We brought Baba and Jiji, too!”

Kanan and Mari shared scents with the rest of the Ayase family and invited them inside. Both Eli and Nozomi were thankful for the warmth in the house; their cub and their grandcub might not have been affected as badly by the chilly weather, but age was creeping up on the couple in all sorts of ways.

“How have things been, Karin?” Kanan asked, making fierce and direct eye contact, as always. “I’m guessing Ai is feeling better now, or you wouldn’t be here. How about Natsumi? Is she doing well?”

“Ai’s doing fine now,” Karin replied, and forced herself to keep her gaze steady. “She’s going back to work Monday, but she’s home with the baby right now.”

A buzzing from her phone interrupted their conversation, and Karin was secretly thankful for that – it wasn’t that she didn’t love Kanan, or that Kanan didn’t love her, but the constant, unspoken alpha language was tiring.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Karin, it’s Ryo,” came the voice on the other line. “Are you busy at the moment?”

“Not really, no,” Karin replied. “What’s wrong?”

“Well, I know we were supposed to meet for dinner tonight, but something’s come up and I might not be free later,” Ryo said. “I was wondering if perhaps you might like to meet up now?”

Karin’s belly was already full from Nico’s homemade lunch, but she supposed there was no harm in meeting with Ryo and ordering something light, or even a dessert. “I can come whenever you’re ready,” she said. “Same place?”

“Same place,” said Ryo. “So let’s meet in… oh, about thirty minutes? I’ll see you there!”

Confident that her parents and Ai’s parents would together be able to handle the little terror that was Miyu, Karin departed for the downtown restaurant to which Ryo had invited her. It was a mid-size establishment, nothing too fancy, though folks in crisp work attire seemed to congregate there, and it made Karin feel out of place in her casual clothes.

“Nice to see you again,” Ryo said once she spotted Karin. “I hope it wasn’t too much trouble to call you here early.”

“Not at all,” Karin said. “My daughter is spending time with her grandparents now, so I’m free for the time being.”

They were seated quickly, but Ryo waited to start any sort of meaningful conversation until after they’d already ordered their food. Karin noticed she seemed rather tense, with her brow furrowed more often than not and her eyes darting all around, as though she feared someone might overhear them.

“It really is nice to talk to you again,” Ryo said, and then continued in a lower voice, “but there’s a reason I asked you to come.”

Karin leaned in so as to hear her companion better. “What do you mean?”

“Have you ever heard of the Anther pack?” Ryo asked.

“Anther?” Karin blinked, and then shook her head. “No, never. That’s a, uh… weird name for a pack, though. Who are they?”

Ryo sighed deeply. “Well, I’ll cut right to the chase, Karin,” she said, and checked once more to ensure no one was listening to them. “My daughter was caught up in a serious mess recently. She was… She was groomed by an older alpha, and I didn’t realize what was happening until it was almost too late.”

Karin felt her stomach tighten at Ryo’s words. “Oh, god… That’s terrible!” she said. “What happened? Is she safe?”

“She’s safe, thank the gods, but I’m still trying to track down her predator,” Ryo explained. “That’s what I was doing when I ran into you the other day. I was really happy to see you, because I know you’re a capable alpha, and, well… I was wondering if you’d help me out. From what I’ve been able to gather so far, it seems the alpha who was bothering my daughter is part of a larger pack called Anther that’s based in Numazu.”

That news had Karin’s heart beating a little faster. Was Ryo implying that there was an entire pack of alphas bent on luring young omega girls in? The thought of someone laying their hands on Natsumi or one of her packmates’ cubs filled her with dread. “How were you able to figure that out?” she asked.

“All three of my parents have worked with people from all over the country,” Ryo replied. “It’s easy to gather a little information when you know that many people.”

“I’ll help you any way that I can,” Karin said firmly, feeling that her pack’s safety was now on the line.

“I really appreciate it, Karin,” Ryo said, and gave a slight bow. “I really want to find this pack and give them a piece of my mind. It’s just… Well, I’m a single alpha without a pack, and my parents are getting older, so I don’t want them hurt…”

“My pack can back you up,” Karin said. “If what you’ve told me is true, it affects them, too. I’m sure they’d be willing to help.”

“It won’t be until next weekend that I can return to Numazu,” Ryo said. “I’ll be doing a little more investigating between now and then. Now that you know, you should be on the lookout, too. Thank you so much, Karin, really.”

Once they finished their meal (or pie, in Karin’s case), Ryo and Karin parted ways, with a promise to meet up again next week to get to the bottom of the predatory alpha mess. Their discussion had unsettled Karin deeply, and while she knew that there was little point in fretting too much since no one she knew had ever even heard of this “Anther” pack, she was still desperate to get back home to protect her family if need be. To calm her nerves somewhat, Karin called Ai on the way back to the Aqours home.

“How are you feeling, baby?” Karin asked her wife. “Everything still going smoothly?”

“Oh, thank goodness you called, Karin,” Ai said, and she sounded breathless. “You’re not gonna believe what just happened with Yuki-chan…”

Karin could not believe her ears.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay. so. there is SO MUCH going on in this story and so much i want to cover, so this chapter is pretty massive compared to what i usually put out. i hope everything is still coherent and i hope it's still enjoyable for u my friends if you've ever commented here i love you so much...... 
> 
> also! please enjoy the new family tree! i've marked each character with their birth pack and also colored dots to indicate their parents. next time i'll post an updated version of the original muse and aqours family trees as a refresher  
> [Cub Family Tree](https://i.imgur.com/8ioez42.png)

It was after midnight, and still Setsuna’s half of the bed was empty and cold. The alphas were all out on patrol, scenting the neighborhood and searching for any traces of Kensuke or his pack, and probably blowing off a good deal of steam, too. Kasumi, meanwhile, lay bundled up in the blankets, eyes shut but still very much awake. Her thoughts were coming a mile a minute, pounding at the inside of her skull and sending her heart into a racing frenzy. The incident with Kensuke had disturbed her enough; Karin’s report of an entire pack of his kind had just been the sour icing on the whole, godawful cake. She knew her Yuki was a good cub at heart, so perhaps it was something Kasumi and Setsuna had done as parents that drove her to cling to the alpha man, some failing they’d carried out without notice but which had permanently affected their darling daughter.

Kasumi heaved a great sigh and turned over onto her other side. She needed to stop thinking so much, but the thoughts of her little girl’s grooming at the hands of a grown alpha and the possibility that she might have been able to prevent it played on a constant, chattering loop in her exhausted brain, and sleep was out of the question.

A buzz and a jingle drew Kasumi out of her anxiety-riddled thoughts for a moment, and her eyes snapped open. There was another buzz and another jingle, and another, and another, until Kasumi realized that the sounds were coming from Yuki’s phone, which was still safely secured in the lockbox on the desk. Normally she abhorred the idea of snooping through her children’s things, but the circumstances had changed over the course of a single day, and now a mix of both dread and curiosity welled within her.

She tossed the blankets aside and approached the desk, where she retrieved the phone from the lockbox, squinting against the screen’s bright light as she opened the messages. They were all from Kensuke, of course, and just the sight of his name made Kasumi want to scratch someone’s eyes out. That was nothing compared to how she felt reading the actual messages.

**Ken♥:** sorry things ended the way they did today sweetheart, i thought your parents might understand but i guess not

**Ken♥:** sometimes parents don’t realize how much their cubs have grown up. to them you’ll always be just a baby

**Ken♥:** i’m begging you not to listen to them yuki-chan, you are a beautiful intelligent and mature omega with so much potential. you can’t let them hold you back anymore, we’re a mated pair and will be for life no matter what anyone says

**Ken♥:** just thinking about your scent makes me happy…

**Ken♥:** _Sent an image._

Kasumi wrinkled her nose in disgust at the image of the male alpha’s erect penis. Gods only knew how many pictures like that he’d sent to her Yuki! Kasumi feared the answer, and her thumb hovered hesitantly over the screen, but, in the interest of gathering evidence against Kensuke, she decided to scroll up and just look.

Countless pictures of Kensuke’s reddened genitals awaited her, some even with the distinctively male “knot” visible, but that wasn’t even the worst of it. Further up, Kasumi was horrified to find images of Yuki herself, spread out on her pink puppy-dog sheets in a number of inappropriate positions. Kasumi’s heart began to race again, and she felt she’d breached some sort of trust bond with Yuki, even though she was only performing her duty as a mother to get to the bottom of the cub’s situation. She’d seen enough, really, and yet a sick sort of curiosity gripped her then, as though she needed to know the _full_ extent of her daughter’s relationship to this questionable man, and she continued scrolling.

Her heart nearly stopped at what came next.

Image after image of Kensuke and Yuki together in a variety of obscene positions made Kasumi want to crack the phone in half and throw it far, far away – just rid herself of this filth and be done with it – and she began to tremble when she noticed a slight detail that turned the image set from horrific to downright sinister. Most of the pictures seemed to be taken by Kensuke himself, and those were obvious, but… who was holding the camera in the remaining pictures?

Kasumi returned the phone to the lockbox with unsteady hands. She was never, ever meant to see those images, and now that she had, gods help anyone who would stand between her and the tender flesh of Kensuke’s throat – hell, and his entire pack, too. The weight of her grief and her anger and her disgust was overwhelming, suffocating, and suddenly she couldn’t stand to sit silent in her room anymore. She ventured downstairs to see if anyone was still up, and to her relief, she found Ayumu and Ai awake and chatting in front of the TV.

“Couldn’t sleep, Kasumin?” Ayumu asked, and made space for their friend on the sofa.

“Of course not,” Kasumi replied, and settled herself slowly down between her two omega packmates. “It’s not like an alpha freak has been touching my daughter or anything.”

Ai rubbed Kasumi’s shoulders soothingly. “Easy, Kasumi, we get it,” she said. “Heck, I couldn’t sleep myself while I was thinking about all that. And Karin’s not home, either… Of course all this would come to light while she was out of town.” She gently stroked the baby sleeping in the sling fastened around one of her shoulders, clearly lonely for her mate. 

“The other alphas should be home soon, at least,” Ayumu said. “Rina messaged me a minute ago and said they were near the pier. So…”

There was an uncomfortable silence afterward in which both Ai and Ayumu were unsure of what to say next to try and comfort their friend. Kasumi stared darkly at the near-empty glass of water on the coffee table, silently waffling back and forth on whether or not to tell her friends what she’d seen. The click of the lock on the front door interrupted her train of thought, though, and the alphas filed in, all still shifted and furry and smelling of raw musk.

“You’re still up, Kasumi?” Setsuna asked, and came to take her wife’s hands in her own.

Kasumi squeezed Setsuna’s hands, and then came easily into her arms. “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all,” she said. “Just thinking, you know.”

Setsuna knew all too well, so she bid the others good night and returned to the bedroom arm-in-arm with Kasumi. Her poor mate seemed really shaken, so she changed quickly into her nightclothes and joined her in the bed, pressing her body close and kissing her sweetly.

“Did you find anything?” Kasumi asked once their lips separated at last.

“We found some male markers we didn’t recognize on the hiking trail,” Setsuna said. “You know, over by the shrine. I’m thinking it might be the pack Karin warned us about, but we don’t know for sure yet.”

Kasumi shut her eyes, drawing in the comforting scent of her alpha. The images she’d seen on Yuki’s phone gnawed fiercely at her, and she knew it was the right thing to share what she’d seen with Setsuna… But, opening her eyes again, she saw the exhaustion and the fear in her love’s eyes, and she couldn’t bring herself to say anything, not yet.

“Let’s just sleep,” Kasumi said. “We can talk more about it in the morning. My head hurts.”

Setsuna kissed her once more and turned out the light. “Good night, sweetie,” she said. “I love you.”

Setsuna was breathing deep and even not long after, but Kasumi stayed awake, staring into the dark and pondering all the ways one could end an alpha’s life. She knew for certain that sleep would never come easy until Kensuke and his gang of degenerates were in the ground by her hand, and it wasn’t until the gentle blue light before the dawn began to creep up on the curtains that she drifted off at last.

 

Nanaka was Mari’s youngest cub, sister to Ai and half sister to Sayuri. She was a Papa’s girl through and through, even more so than her eldest sister, and her cubhood idolization of Kanan now shone through in her physique and in her mannerisms. Her well-muscled form was the result of playing hard and training harder alongside her father and Sayuri, and her scent was unusually dark and musky for an omega. All in all, she was the very picture of Kanan in her youth, and this made her parents swell with pride.

In keeping with the athletic traditions of the Matsuura family, Nanaka liked to enjoy an early breakfast and a peaceful jog around the neighborhood. As she peered out the window that faced the front yard, she heard a scuttling of little paws coming down the stairs towards her.

“Looks like we can’t go out today, Sissy,” Nanaka said. “It’s about to rain.”

Sissy was a little chihuahua who belonged to Riko and Yoshiko. The couple had found themselves dreadfully lonely once Setsuna married and moved away to Numazu, so they decided – without telling anyone – to adopt a dog into the pack. Sissy was a spoiled little thing with all the best food and all the fanciest toys, and with her flowing black-and-tan coat always immaculately groomed. Kanan had no love for the thing – and that was one place where she and Nanaka differed. Nanaka could appreciate the company of a dog on her morning jog, and she was certain that Riko and Yoshiko appreciated Sissy getting some exercise outside the house, too.

This morning, though, dark, low-hanging clouds loomed over the neighborhood, and Nanaka knew that if she ventured out she’d be caught up in the inevitable rainstorm. She patted Sissy’s disappointed little head and went to the kitchen to make herself some breakfast and to put on her mother’s coffee. The sound of more little feet coming down the stairs caught her ear, and Miyu appeared not long after. The little cub had insisted on staying with her Nonna and “Stinky” last night, so Karin had left her, though reluctantly.

“Aunt Banana?” Miyu crept close to Nanaka and got up on her tiptoes to peer into the frying pan. “I’m hungry.”

Nanaka met her with a cheerful smile. “Morning, Miyu-chan!” she said. “I’ll make enough for both of us.”

The breakfast Nanaka prepared was a healthy one, but it was so laced with proteins that Miyu, growing little alpha that she was, couldn’t help but love it. She studied her aunt while she chewed, silently pondering the omega’s curiously musky scent.

“Are you an alpha or an omega?” Miyu blurted when at last the questions were too much.

Nanaka seemed surprised at first, but then she threw back her head and laughed. “I’m an omega, silly!”

To any adult shifter, it was obvious that Nanaka’s scent was plainly omega even beneath her cool musk. To a cub, though, things weren’t quite so clear-cut, and Miyu still wasn’t entirely convinced. She tried a different approach.

“But do you have a weenie?”

Nanaka nearly snorted her milk with laughter. Luckily, Mari came down the stairs almost immediately afterward and rescued her poor daughter from having to answer such a question.

“ _Good morning, my sunshines!_ ”

Mari greeted her cub and her grandcub with a nuzzle each, and was then pleased to find that her morning coffee was already dripping down into the pot. She’d always loved the stuff, but now, as she approached sixty, she found the boost it gave her was even more refreshing than in her younger years, when she drank it mostly for pleasure.

“Nonna, are we still gonna go horseback riding?” Miyu asked once she’d finished her meal.

Mari chuckled at her little grandcub’s hopeful blue eyes. It’d been a long time since her own cubs were that little, and while Kanan had kept her active throughout the years, she wasn’t quite sure if she could match the pace of a feisty five year-old alpha this morning. Not that today was a great day for riding, anyway – a spatter of raindrops on the window answered Miyu’s question.

“Oops, not today, Miyu-chan!” Mari said. “It’s starting to rain now! Why don’t we go in the summertime, when it’s warm and you’re a little bigger, hmm?”

“But you _promised_ ,” Miyu reminded her with a pitiful pout.

Indeed Mari had promised, but it couldn’t be helped – the sky unleashed a powerful downpour on the city, and they’d be soaked completely through if they tried even walking to the mailbox. Miyu whined and whined, but even her Stinky couldn’t change the weather.

The gloomy weather saw the rest of the Aqours pack waking later than usual, and even then they couldn’t keep themselves from yawning and settling down for some relaxing time in front of the TV. Miyu swatted at them and tugged at their hands and at their ankles, but only her grandparents and Nanaka seemed willing to rough-and-tumble with her while the rain drummed on and on.

“Why is everyone so tired?” Miyu demanded. “It’s morning already!”

Miyu was a fiery alpha cub with no concept of “sleeping in” or “rainy day blues.” Day was day, regardless of the weather, and it was for playing, not sleeping or laying on the couch. Kanan lifted the cub up into her arms and touched foreheads with her.

“We have quiet time in the morning, Miyu,” Kanan said. “Come on, do you want me to take you to see your Mommy?”

“Nooo,” Miyu replied, and clung tight to her grandfather. “I wanna stay here with you and Nonna and Aqours.”

Riko was seated on the couch with Yoshiko at her side and little Sissy nestled between them, and she seemed to remember something suddenly, so she waved for Miyu’s attention. “Miyu-chan,” she said, “Yoshiko and I were thinking about coming to visit your pack in Uchiura soon. Would you like that?”

Miyu was always excited to visit with her extended family, so she heartily agreed. “Uh-huh!” she said. “You can bring Sissy, too!”

When it was determined that Riko and Yoshiko (and possibly Sissy) would come to visit the following weekend, and when it was also determined that most of the Aqours pack was too drained by the gloom outside to do much beyond quiet, sedentary activities far too boring for a cub, Miyu finally agreed to return to Karin at the Muse pack’s house. Most of the Muse members were home, as well, save for Honoka, who’d gone to open up her sweets shop for the morning.

“What’s Jiji saying?” Miyu asked once she was settled in and playing with some old toys in the living room alongside Rin. From the kitchen she could hear her paternal grandfather speaking some strange language Miyu had never heard before.

Karin cocked her head to listen. “Oh, she’s speaking Russian,” she said. “Jiji used to live in Russia when she was little. Did you know that?”

Geography wasn’t exactly Miyu’s strong suit, seeing as she was five years old, and she replied with only a confused stare.

Reine, who was Nico’s older daughter, came down the stairs while Nozomi was in the middle of explaining the concept of countries and languages to little Miyu. She was wearing a certain _look_ that perturbed Karin, and the alpha fixed her with an annoyed glare.

“Don’t ask me for Ryo’s number,” Karin said.

“Mind your business, Karin,” Reine replied. “What difference does it make to you if I want to talk to her? It’s not like she’s your mate or anything.”

“It’s just weird coming at her out of the blue like that,” Karin said, and crossed her arms stubbornly. “Besides, I’m pretty sure she’s already married. She said she had a cub!”

“Having a cub and being married aren’t the same thing,” Reine reminded her. “Did she mention a wife at all to you? She didn’t, right? So I doubt she’s married, and if she is, well, it was worth a shot, right?”

Eli returned to the living room and cleared her throat, a polite way of interrupting the older cubs’ bickering. “Girls,” she said. “Your Aunt Alisa is coming to visit for the New Year! You remember her, don’t you, Karin?”

Aunt Alisa was Eli’s younger alpha sister who’d returned to Russia with her mate, Yukiho – who was Honoka’s sister – after finishing school. They’d visited a handful of times throughout Karin’s cubhood, and she’d gotten birthday gifts from them, as well, but the physical distance between them made it hard to maintain much of a familial relationship.

“Who the heck is Alisa?” Miyu asked as she left Rin and their toys and crawled up into Eli’s waiting lap.

“Aunt Alisa is Jiji’s sister,” Karin explained. “And Aunt Yukiho is Honoka’s sister. They came to visit you when you were just a baby!”

The prospect of a family gathering even larger than normal (and their normal ones were _very_ large) lifted Karin’s spirits somewhat, though the matter of Yuki and the oddly-named “Anther” pack still weighed heavily on her mind. She’d only disclosed the details to her parents; she didn’t dare breathe a word about it while Kotori and Umi were around. She did suggest, however, that their cub might like to hear from them.

“Oh, poor girl,” Kotori said. “It’s been hard on her, hasn’t it? The miscarriage. She hasn’t called in a while, but I didn’t want to bother her…”

“Well, you know Kasumi, always trying to be tough,” Karin said. “But I think it’d do her some good to hear from you right now. She’s been pretty down.” It wasn’t Karin’s place to mention anything about the Yuki situation, but she could nudge things in the right direction, at least. “Anyway, it’s probably time for me to head home now. I want to make it there before dinner so I can spend a little time with Ai.”

Miyu immediately burrowed into the space between Nozomi and Eli upon hearing the word “home.” Nozomi chuckled and scratched the cub’s back affectionately.

“Oh, Miyu-chan, you don’t wanna go home, do you?” she said. “Tell you what – after the new year rolls around why don’t you see if Mommy will let you spend a couple weeks here with us? Hmm? That sound good?”

Miyu held tight to her grandmother’s blouse. “That’s too far away,” she whined, and her lip began to quiver. “I miss you, Baba.”

Nozomi bent to kiss and nuzzle the poor little alpha, and then shared a tender look with her mate. Eli stood and pulled the pitiful cub to her feet, encouraging her to stand up straight.

“Come on, no tears now, there’s a big alpha,” Eli said. “Do you want me and Baba to come out to the car with you?”

Miyu did, so once Karin was done saying goodbye to the members of her birth pack (and reluctantly handing Ryo’s phone number over to Reine), Eli and Nozomi accompanied their big cub and their little grandcub to the car. They strapped Miyu into her car seat, and smothered her in kisses and nuzzles and promises of seeing each other again soon, all the while Karin stood by and watched with amusement plastered on her face.

“Be good, little cub,” Nozomi said once it was finally time for her to go back inside. The rain had let up for now, but it was still damp and chilly outside, and she hadn’t worn her warm sweater. “Remember what I told you, alright? You’ll be okay, I can guarantee it.” She pulled her cub into one last, motherly hug. “We love you, Karin. Tell Kiyoko we love her, too.”

Eli stayed behind for a moment after Nozomi went back into the house. She regarded her cub with a proud smile, one which Karin returned with a sheepish one.

“I’m proud of you, Karin,” Eli said. “You’re really taking charge now, aren’t you? Like a real alpha leader.”

“I just want to keep the pack safe,” Karin replied. “I can’t really stand the thought of those creeps being in the neighborhood while I’m not home to keep Natsumi out of their claws, you know? And Miyu… I worry about her running off and getting into more trouble than she can handle…”

“Now do you understand why I did the things I did for you and your sister?” Eli asked.

Karin glanced back at Miyu, who was waiting with rapidly-thinning patience in her car seat. “Yeah,” Karin said. “I do now.”

Eli pulled Karin into a tight hug, rumbling affectionately. “Be careful, Karin,” she said. “No matter how old you get, I’ll still be here for you – for anything – so don’t be afraid to call me if you need help.”

Eli at last sent Karin and Miyu on their way, and stood on the porch until their car was around the corner and out of sight. When she returned to the kitchen, Nozomi was there, absently scrubbing at the already-clean countertop. By this point, having been together for over forty years, Eli had a keen sense for when her mate was perturbed by something. She approached Nozomi with a tender kiss.

“You miss the cubs, don’t you?” Eli asked, and cupped her wife’s face sweetly.

“Of course I do, I’m their mother,” Nozomi said, and then dropped her voice so that Kotori and Umi would not be able to hear them from the living room. “But that’s not really what’s got me right now. I’ve got a bad feeling about that pack Karin mentioned to us.”

“I’ve been thinking about them myself,” Eli said, her flirtatious expression replaced by a more serious one now. “I worry about the cubs trying to fight… But I guess they’re grown now. I know I can’t fight their battles forever, but…”

Nozomi shook her head. “I just don’t think any of us – not even Karin and the other cubs – should get involved any more than we need to,” she said. “I can sense something very wrong, and I don’t like it. We should get Yuki away from them at most, obviously, but any more and… I just don’t know.”

Eli knew better than to brush off Nozomi’s well-developed intuition; her mate was seldom wrong when it came to just about anything. “Why didn’t you warn Karin?” she asked.

“Because she’s your daughter,” Nozomi replied. “She’s every bit as stubborn as you. I don’t suppose you’d have listened to me if I told you not to mess with Naoko anymore, right?” When she was met with only a perplexed frown from Eli, Nozomi laughed and pulled her alpha into a hug. “But Karin’s got your wits, too, you know. And your strength. I trust her to work through it without too much trouble – it’s everyone else I’m worried about. We’ll just have to see how things play out…”

 

Miyu’s good behavior thankfully lasted well into the evening, which kept the already-high stress levels for Karin and her packmates from inflating any more than necessary. The cub took to playing nicely with Kasumi’s little ones (which relieved Kasumi, as well), and Kiyoko was busy entertaining baby Natsumi as practice for her own parenthood, so Karin and Ai took the opportunity to steal away to their bedroom and spend some time together before dinner.

“Did they find anything on patrol last night?” Karin asked. Ai was nestled beside her in the bed, rumbling contentedly into the crook of Karin’s neck.

“Sayuri said they found some unfamiliar male markers near the hiking trail,” Ai said, without making any effort to look up. “They wanted to wait for you before they went any farther, though.”

Uchiura was different from the Akihabara of their youth in that it was home to a rich community of shifter families. It’d taken some time to learn whose markers were whose, as well as which were benign and which were suspect. After nearly a decade of living here, the pack was familiar with all the usual alpha markers, and, being such a small town, they could recognize just about everyone, if only by scent. The sudden placement of unknown scent markers could only mean that someone was silently encroaching on the neighborhood, and Karin didn’t like it one bit.

“We should have another patrol tonight, but…” Karin glanced uncertainly at the window. The sky was overcast, as it had been when she left Tokyo earlier in the day, but if she went out and faced the ocean now she could see that there was another storm brewing out beyond the coast. Rain dulled shifter scent markers, and while the previous night’s patrol wouldn’t be completely washed away, it wouldn’t be nearly as effective at getting the message across. Patrolling _while_ it was raining was just foolishness.

“You should talk to the alphas about it,” Ai said. “I doubt Setsuna will want to wait too long to act. I mean… Honestly, I don’t, either, but it’s too dangerous to go out in a storm, and probably pointless, too.”

“We’ll get some kind of plan worked out after dinner,” Karin said. She then turned her full attention to the scent of her mate and the feel of their bodies pressed up against each other. The scent of sickness had gone from Ai now, leaving her once again smelling sweet and sunny, and it reminded Karin that they hadn’t been intimate since some time before Ai had fallen ill.

Ai seemed to sense Karin’s shift in mood, and she propped herself up on her elbow with a cheeky smirk. “You’re not even thinking about the plan, are you?”

“Well, not really,” Karin admitted. She ran her fingers along her mate’s side, stopping to rest at the top of her hip. “We didn’t really come up here to talk about plans, did we?”

“Guess not.”

Theirs was an easy, casual intimacy, one cultivated since cubhood and which required no guessing or hesitancy. Whenever the mood struck and their arousal was hinted either through scent or visual cue, it wasn’t all that far to leap from normal conversation to having Karin’s head buried between Ai’s legs. Their knack for “snap sex” came in handy as the parents of two young cubs whose needs seemed endless much of the time.

During a normal session, Karin might have drawn out Ai’s pleasure, sweeping her tongue slow and tantalizing along and between her mate’s sensitive folds, but beyond the sweet musk of omega arousal she could smell the aroma of dinnertime wafting up from downstairs. There wasn’t much time left, so Karin made no effort to spare her wife’s most sensitive bits, and went at them wholeheartedly, lapping and prodding and sucking until breathless Ai snarled her orgasm at last.

Karin shimmied out of her constricting pants and grabbed hold of Ai’s hips, eager for the next part, but Ai pushed her gently back with a mischievous grin.

“Let’s switch it up, Karin,” the omega said, and eased Karin onto her back instead.

Karin’s cock was red and swollen against her dark-furred belly, and Ai gave it a few tight-fingered strokes, rolling her alpha’s foreskin back and forth over the stark pink head.

“Hurry, Ai,” Karin urged her. “There’s not much time left…”

Ai agreed, and mere seconds later was astride Karin’s hips, stuffed full of her mate’s cock and bucking and rolling for all she was worth. Karin gripped Ai’s thighs in her claws, moaning as she took in the sight of her omega’s bouncing breasts and of herself buried to the hilt inside of her. She put no dampers on her nasty thoughts, her breaths coming quickly as she willed herself to hurry, hurry, hurry…

“Mama?”

Both Karin and Ai froze at the sound of their little cub’s voice. Slowly, Ai lowered her tail down over her bottom to conceal her intimate union with Karin, and turned with what she hoped was a sweet smile to Miyu. The cub was standing there seemingly speechless.

“What’s wrong, Miyu-chan?” Ai asked, and tried to keep her breathing even.

Miyu crept a little closer, her young eyes wide and curious as she took in the sight of her furry but very naked mother sitting atop her also-naked father. “What are you doing?”

“Erm… Mama and Mommy are mating right now,” Ai answered truthfully. “Remember when we talked about knocking before you come in?”

“Yeah…” Miyu finally averted her eyes, though she was more ashamed at forgetting to knock than she was at catching her parents in the act. She didn’t quite understand the finer mechanics of mating, anyway; she only knew it was something the grownups did in private, and also that Setsuna and Kasumi did it on the couch one time when no one else was awake. “Well, it’s dinnertime, Mama, Mommy.”

The cub left, leaving the door wide open behind her, and Ai couldn’t stop herself from snickering as she got up to shut it. Karin, on the other hand, did not find it the least bit funny, and rolled over onto her stomach, her cock now soft and shamed.

“Why did you _tell_ her?” Karin asked miserably, her voice muffled by the pillows she’d chosen to hide her face in.

Ai perched on the edge of the mattress and gave her mate’s furred back some reassuring scratches. “Oh, Karin, she’s lived her whole life in this house! She knows grown shifters mate sometimes! No big deal!”

Karin disagreed, if only out of dire embarrassment. To her relief, Miyu didn’t seem to have passed the news on to their other packmates, and the table conversation was fixed firmly on the next course of action regarding Kensuke and his alleged pack.

“I’d really prefer to wait until Ryo comes this weekend before we do anything too drastic,” Karin said. “She seems to have a lot of information about that pack, and it’d be better if we weren’t just walking around blindly.”

“You have a point,” Setsuna said. “But what about the markers we found on the trail? That’s not very far from here, and I worry about it.” She glanced at Yuki’s empty spot at the table, the concern plain on her face.

“We’ll keep patrolling until the weekend,” Sayuri said. “Given what we already know about them, I doubt they’re really the types to play fair and clean… But I think if we keep our markers fresh it’ll dissuade them from doing anything else, at least.”

“I’ll help patrol, too!” Miyu declared, and pounded her little fists on the table. “No one’s gonna come hurt Yuki!”

Ai chuckled and ruffled her brave little cub’s hair. “Well, we appreciate that, Miyu-chan!” she said. “But you’re still too little to go out on patrol. Why don’t you stay here and protect the house instead?”

That timeless suggestion was never a hit with alpha cubs too young to leave a proper scent marker, and Miyu was no exception. She stabbed angrily at her dinner with her chopsticks. “Well, Stinky and Jiji said I was big!”

Karin reached over and plucked the chopsticks clean from her cub’s furious hand. “Your Mama’s right and you’ll do as she says.”

Miyu’s face screwed up into some ugly mix of upset and rage, but Ai whisked her away from the table before she could cause any more of a ruckus. Karin only sighed and shook her head; it seemed Miyu’s good behavior streak was crumbling back to dust. Kasumi, for once, politely avoided taking a stinging jab at Karin and drew everyone’s focus back to the matter at hand.

“I’m worried about the girls getting to and from school, and who might be talking to them there,” Kasumi said. “I mean, Yuki had to have met that Kensuke guy at school somehow.” She roved her eyes over her four present cubs, who were listening quite fearfully to the adults’ conversation. “You all know you’re never, ever supposed to talk to alphas you don’t know, right? Even if they seem nice, don’t ever trust them and don’t go anywhere with them unless me or someone else from our pack is with you. Got it?”

“Yes, Mama,” came the chorused reply.

It was decided that all the cubs, including Ayumu and Rina’s alpha Kasane, would stay home from school tomorrow, but Setsuna decreed that their homework still needed to be done tonight. Aya promptly dragged her father up to her room to consult her for help with her science work, leaving Kasumi free to speak to Karin in private.

“Can you come up to my room?” Kasumi asked, and Karin could tell just from her expression that no jokes or pranks awaited her upstairs.

The bedroom Kasumi and Setsuna shared typically had a lingering, musky sort of scent; this wasn’t much of a surprise to anyone, as the attraction and the passion between the two was hardly a secret, and the musk that laced their bedroom was merely a reminder. Today, though, the musk was faint – stale, even – and Karin wondered how badly recent times were affecting the poor couple’s relationship.

“I haven’t showed Setsuna yet, because I don’t know how to tell her,” Kasumi said as she pulled Yuki’s phone from her lockbox. “I think it’s better if I show you first, anyway. We can’t have Setsuna running out into the night, after all.”

The two of them sat side by side at the end of the bed, and Kasumi slowly scrolled through the same pictures she’d found the night before, the ones of Yuki and Kensuke in the act before an unknown photographer. Karin was horrified, but she took it all in silently.

“I don’t know what to do,” Kasumi said. “I feel like… If this is happening, then we might find ourselves in deeper shit than we really want to be. Get what I’m saying? They might be taking advantage of other omega cubs, too. And I don’t know if we can handle that.”

“We still have to do something about it,” Karin said. “It’s not like we can just leave the rest to the police. Sayuri can only do so much, and beyond that you already know no one will help us. But if there are omega cubs out there getting hurt, it’s the right thing to do to try and save them, even if it’s by ourselves.”

“I know that,” Kasumi said. “I’m just worried, that’s all. I don’t want my mate to die fighting for strangers’ cubs…”

Kasumi’s words were stone cold to the sensibilities of most, but within them there rested the most primal, ancient animal logic – protect one’s own first. Her feelings, then, were a matter of ingrained biological priorities, not necessarily cruelty on Kasumi’s part. Karin understood this, and put a comforting arm about her packmate’s shoulders.

“We’ll get it figured out, Kasu,” she said. “I know you’re stressed out, but we don’t know everything yet. Let’s just wait and see how things play out. Hopefully we can get these alphas to go peacefully… Heck, hopefully there’s no pack at all!”

“I know, I know,” Kasumi sighed. “It’s just too much on top of all the other shit I’ve been dealing with.” She took a long, deep pause, and a dark rumble of thunder shook the house, announcing the arrival of the storm at last. Finally, she said, “Don’t tell Setsuna yet, please. She’s got enough on her plate right now, and I don’t want her freaking out any more than she needs to.”

Karin knew how sensitive to stress Setsuna could be, despite her tough exterior and her incredible perseverance. There was a weariness in her fellow alpha’s eyes these days, no doubt the result of overworking herself regularly and dealing with the loss of a much-wanted pregnancy, and what Kasumi had shown Karin tonight would no doubt send her over the edge, dirty as it felt to keep it from her.

 

The evening wore on, and the rain battered ceaselessly at the roof, with no sign of slowing down enough for the alphas to go out on a patrol. Setsuna peered disapprovingly through the kitchen blinds. She’d been eager to return to the hiking trail to continue their investigation, but the weather wasn’t cooperating, and tomorrow’s forecast looked grim, as well.

“The alphas aren’t gonna come, are they, Papa?” Aya asked as she nudged herself under Setsuna’s arm. She was ten years old with an incredibly active imagination, which sometimes lent itself to overthinking and nightmares, and she still relied heavily on her Papa to make it all better.

Setsuna pulled the cub close and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Of course not,” she assured her. “And even if they did, Papa’s here to protect you! You and all your sisters, too.”

“I’m worried about Yuki,” Tomori said from her place at the dining table. The last scraps of her homework were laid out nearby, but she was more focused on her drawing of a dragon to really bother with finishing it. “She usually talks to me, but I haven’t seen her at all today.”

“I’m worried about her, too, sweetie,” Setsuna said. She realized then that all four of her present cubs were staring at her with a sad sort of helplessness, the expressions of cubs who wished for their father to make things right by whatever magic it was that parents had at their disposal. Setsuna quickly straightened up and put on a positive face. “Anyway, girls, it’s getting late now, so why don’t you go on up to your rooms for some quiet time? I’ll be up later to tuck you into bed. Okay?”

The cubs obeyed, and they gathered their things and headed up to their respective rooms. Setsuna went to the living room and flopped herself down beside Kiyoko and Shizuku, who were watching Karin and Rina wrestle with their cubs on the floor. Both alphas gave Setsuna a friendly pat.

“Everything will turn out okay,” Shizuku assured her.

Setsuna shook her head. “I don’t think we should talk about this around the cubs anymore,” she said. “I can tell my girls are worried now, and I don’t want that on their minds. So…”

Miyu suddenly pounced into Setsuna’s lap with a fierce little roar. “Are we still going on patrol?!” she asked, as though her parents hadn’t already corrected her earlier.

Kasane, who was nine years old and the alpha daughter of Rina and Ayumu, grabbed hold of Miyu and yanked her backwards onto the floor. “We can’t patrol!” she said. “We’re cubs! Right, Mom?”

“That’s right,” Rina said. “It’s not safe for cubs to go out at night like that!”

Miyu stomped her foot and faced Karin with a baby growl. “Well, if I can’t mark in the house and I can’t mark outside, then _where_ am I supposed to mark?!”

Karin laughed and gave her a big kiss. “In the potty like everyone else, you stinky little cub,” she said. “Speaking of stinky… I think it’s bathtime!” She grabbed hold of her cub before she could react and started up the stairs with her. Miyu, being herself, roared and scratched and kicked at her father, her frustrations at being a child at last erupting into the forefront.

Once Miyu’s tantrum had faded into the distance, there came some quiet footsteps upon the stairs, and when everyone turned to look, Yuki was there, creeping down as quietly as possible. After a long day of avoiding the rest of the pack, hunger had at last driven her to the kitchen.

“Yuki-chan!” Setsuna cried. “Are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine,” Yuki replied, though her eyes were plainly red-rimmed from crying. She slipped into the kitchen without another word, and the alphas urged Setsuna to go and speak to her.

“I was worried about you,” Setsuna said when they were alone in the kitchen together. “I haven’t really gotten to speak to you since… you know. Since yesterday.”

Yuki sniffled and wiped at her nose, which was beginning to run. “I’m sorry, Papa,” she said. “But Kensuke isn’t a bad guy, you know. You judged him too soon, and now he’s probably never gonna speak to me again.”

Setsuna sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand young love; she did, very much, because she’d loved Yuki’s mother since cubhood. What she didn’t understand was what, exactly, was drawing her daughter so tightly to a man who was clearly taking advantage of her, especially if Ryo’s tip about a full pack was true. She stroked Yuki’s hair, and tucked it cutely behind her ear. “Maybe my shift got the better of me,” she said. “But I just couldn’t risk having you with a grown alpha. I have to be sure for my baby girl.”

Yuki shrank away from her father’s touch at those words. “I’m not a baby anymore,” she replied bitterly. Once her food was done warming, she took it and returned to her room without another word.

Setsuna slumped into a chair and put her head in her hands. Oh, what was she going to do with her lovestruck little cub?

 

The rain didn’t slow until hours after midnight, and the alphas were long asleep by the time it became clear enough for a patrol. All save for one, that is.

Miyu peered out of her bedroom window, satisfied that the earlier downpour was now reduced to a gentle sprinkling. Mama and Mommy weren’t awake to stop her, so she figured she’d get a little alpha practice on a patrol of her own. She wasn’t like the omegas or like Kasane, after all – she was bold, and tough, and she wasn’t afraid of the dark or of imaginary alphas who struck down little cubs. She was a big alpha, and when the pack woke to her scent markers surrounding and protecting their territory, they’d realize that.

She tiptoed down the hall and down the stairs, straining her little senses for the scent or sound of any adults waking. When she found none, she continued on to the foyer, where she donned her jacket and her shoes (which she tied all by herself like the big alpha she was) and then stepped out into the night. It was chilly, and the raindrops were cold on her face and on her scalp, so she raised her hood up against them and marched onward into the dark.

It was difficult to see at such an hour, when the sun was long off and the closest streetlamp wasn’t close at all. But Miyu was an alpha, with all alpha tools at her disposal, and she used her keen ears and her sharp nose to catch the crashing sound and the salty scent of the ocean, which she used to guide her towards the main road, where the streetlamps were. From there, she’d be able to navigate to the hiking trail, where her packmates had found the peculiar male markers.

There was an incredible sense of freedom in being out like this, without any adults to nag her or to her hold her back. Miyu delighted in it, and ran onward, giggling and leaving a sprinkle of her scent on every tree and shrub she passed, as she’d seen the adults do, until at last she reached the road that ran alongside the beach. At this point in her life she had no idea that her own father had once done something similar – that is, sneaking out at some ungodly hour and marking up the neighborhood – but Karin had been thirteen years old at that point, teetering on the brink of cubhood and adolescence, while Miyu was just five years old and a cub in every sense of the word.

The ocean was awesome and mysterious in the night, and young Miyu regarded it as a mighty and tireless god. Fearless as she was, she knew the ocean was to be respected – it could suck her in and drown her just as easily as it could lift her spirits, and she understood this implicitly, as it is one of the first lessons coastal cubs are taught. She climbed down to the sand and admired the dark waves for a while, drawing in the scent of them and finding a strange sort of comfort there. It reminded her of Stinky, for some reason, though she didn’t know why.

When she’d had her fill of the sea at last, Miyu clambered back up to the sidewalk and continued on her way. She didn’t really understand why her fellow cubs feared the dark, or even why she wasn’t allowed to go out on patrol at her age. Nighttime was cool, and quiet, and everything looked different despite being the same as always. Besides that, there didn’t seem to be any alphas lurking in the shadows and waiting to snatch her up and eat her, as Mama usually warned her.

It took a long time to reach the start of the hiking trail. By that time, Miyu’s inexperienced legs were growing tired, and her feet were beginning to ache. She pressed onward, determined to make her mark on the alpha world, but climbing uphill was quite a different beast from traveling on flat ground, and fatigue set in rapidly from there. She stopped to sit on the stone steps that led to the mountain shrine, and was forced to reevaluate her choices. It was a long way back home, and her legs would probably just turn to mush if she even tried walking back now, but she couldn’t very well continue up the trail, either. She sat there, shivering against the autumn chill and her damp jacket, wishing suddenly that she was warm and dry in her bed.

A tiny mewl from the undergrowth startled Miyu at first, but then a spotted cat emerged from the vegetation, and it stared curiously at little Miyu.

“Hi, kitty!” Miyu said, and reached out to stroke the cat’s wet fur. “Wanna sit with me?”

The cat did, and curled itself into Miyu’s lap while the cub massaged it. What a wretched pair they were, all alone and soaked to the bone in the middle of the night, but at least Miyu didn’t feel quite as lonely with her new furry friend. She scratched underneath the cat’s chin, giggling at its noisy purring and wishing that she could bring the little creature home with her. Mama would probably be angry, though, and if Mama wasn’t, then Kasumi would be.

Suddenly, the cat jerked upright and froze, its ears erect and alert.

“What’s wrong?” Miyu asked, and the cat responded by launching itself from her lap and darting back into the brush. Miyu stood up and dusted her bottom off, which was now wet through thanks to the rainwater on the steps (she hadn’t considered that when she originally sat down). “Wait, kitty! Come back here!”

“Are you lost, little girl?”

That voice most definitely did not belong to the cat. Miyu whirled around, and while it was too dark to see clearly, she knew by the scent that it was a formidable alpha man who approached her now. All of a sudden, her parents’ warnings came rushing back to her, and Miyu’s fearlessness crumbled away, leaving only her base instinct for survival at the forefront of her little alpha brain.

“Go away!” Miyu shrieked, her voice cracking into a snarl.

“Easy, I won’t hurt you,” the strange alpha said. “Where are your parents at this hour? Come on, if you come with me, I’ll help you find them.”

Miyu was far too young to have control of her shifts yet, and couldn’t stop the fierce thumping of her heart or the alpha adrenaline that coursed hot through her veins. This man was a big alpha, and he was bad, bad, _bad_ , and that was all her cub brain knew. Her furs burst through, and her tail rippled out just seconds later, and she snarled one final warning at the alpha before she lost control completely. She flung herself at him, unable to see or hear or even think, her entire body running on raw alpha fury as she slashed and snapped and kicked at her much larger opponent.

Despite her burning hot rage and her impressive strikes, Miyu was still a cub at the end of the day, and a wet, exhausted one at that. The male alpha retaliated, and caught the cub cold in his claws.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, like mommy like cub...... 3am excursions are in miyu's blood. please leave me a hot comment with your thoughts and your questions and your suggestions!!!!


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi

Baby Natsumi began to growl and fuss before the first rays of the dawn… or so Karin thought, until she finally forced her eyes open and allowed them to adjust to the dim light of the bedroom. She squinted at the clock on the bedside table, which read 6:53, and it was then that Karin realized it was only still dark due to the rain that was once again thundering down onto the roof. She sat up, and felt Ai begin to stir beside her, but she drew the blankets up over her mate and rubbed her shoulder gently.

“Go back to sleep, I’ve got her,” Karin said, knowing that Ai needed to rest for her first day back at work after a long week of the flu. Ai grunted and promptly drifted off again, leaving Karin to take care of the diaper situation.

Shifter parenthood was in many ways different from beta parenthood, as cubs were hardy and strong-willed straight from the womb, and their vital spirit fueled their intense physical development, which eventually granted them strength that far surpassed that of any beta child. That was all well and good, but there was one other, little-mentioned aspect of cubrearing which made changing time a chore, and that was the addition of fur to little babies’ bottoms.

Karin sighed as she carried her soiled and whimpering cub down the hall to the bathroom. Natsumi had been sampling some soft, baby-safe foods over the last few days, which made Karin immensely proud, but which also resulted in some disastrous diapers. Washing the mess from the baby’s fur was always a task, and not one which Karin was eager to perform so early in the morning, but one that was an inescapable part of having little cubs. How Kasumi handled it with such grace for all five of her babies was a wonder to poor Karin.

She sat little Natsumi in the sink of warm, running water, careful to support her with one hand in case she wobbled backwards and hit her head on the edge of the basin or slid down into the water. The cub offered no resistance to being washed, and instead watched in wonder as her father lathered her fur with a gently-scented soap. Karin chuckled as Natsumi slapped her little claws into the foam.

“Do you like the bubbles, Nacchan?” Karin asked her, and offered her a glob of the stuff. The baby attempted to grab a fistful, and was stunned when the foam disappeared like nothing between her claws.

After giving her a quick rinse, Karin dried the tiny omega’s fur with a soft towel and fastened her into a fresh diaper and onesie, then carried her down the stairs to the kitchen. 

“Sounds like your Aunt Sayuri is already up,” Karin said softly to Natsumi, and smiled at the rumbling reply she received. “Your mama will be up soon, too, you know it? Why don’t we make her some breakfast?”

Sayuri was already in the kitchen, pacing restlessly with her phone pressed to her ear. Karin noticed the fur beginning to rise along the other alpha’s arms, and hung back with a questioning look. Sayuri met her gaze seriously and held up a finger for silence and patience.

“Shit…” Sayuri muttered once she’d slid her phone back into her pocket. She turned to Karin. “I’ve gotta head out right away. Somebody found one of the park ranger guys dead on the steps by the shrine. You know, where we found those scent markers. I’d bet my life it was those Anther fuckers – the park ranger’s a big guy, an alpha, so there’s no way it was a beta who got to him.”

Karin instinctively cuddled Natsumi closer. “What should we do?” she asked. “Do you want us to come back you up? I mean… If you run into them, I doubt your coworkers will be able to handle them well enough.”

“Mm…” Sayuri chewed her lip thoughtfully. “I think it’ll be fine for now. I doubt they’re stupid enough to hang around the scene of the crime, you know? Besides, Setsuna already left for work and it’s raining like crazy out there.”

Karin frowned, but she accepted Sayuri’s logic. “Well, just call if you need any help.”

“I mean, I’m sure we’ll have to go at it ourselves once the rest of the crew finds out it was a shifter crime,” Sayuri said. “It’s hard being one of the only alphas on the force sometimes.” She went to the foyer and strapped on her boots and pulled on her police jacket. “By the way… Setsuna found the front door unlocked this morning! Make sure you tell everyone to be extra careful about that. That’s super dangerous and we should count ourselves lucky no one came in here during the night!”

With that, Sayuri was gone to do her duty, leaving Karin to fret and fix her mate some breakfast (but mostly fret). She secured Natsumi in her high chair with some textured and rattling toys to occupy her, and then set about adding rice to the cooker and oil to the pan. Kiyoko came down the stairs amidst the sounds of banging toys and sizzling meat.

“Morning!” Karin greeted when she spotted her yawning sister.

“Morning, Karin,” Kiyoko said, and gave Natsumi an affectionate scratch. “No one else is up yet?”

Karin shook her head. “Setsuna is apparently gone to work already, but I haven’t seen anyone else besides Sayuri,” she said. “She had to head out early, though. Apparently an alpha park ranger was killed on the trail by the shrine sometime last night, and Sayuri thinks it might be that Anther pack!”

Kiyoko furrowed her brow. “That’s not good,” she said, and chewed her lip as she stared out at the rain through the kitchen window. “Yumi’s been really worried about it, you know. She wants to help, but…”

Yumi entered the kitchen then, dressed in a snug sweater and with her hair falling prettily about her shoulders. Kiyoko was plainly entranced with her scent, which was slowly shifting to the soft and soothing tones of pregnancy, faint as it was beneath the smell of the food. The couple embraced briefly, and Kiyoko left a peck on Yumi’s lips.

“Are you ready?” Kiyoko asked her.

“I’m ready,” Yumi replied, and though her tone was even, Karin could tell she was biting back anxiety.

“Why don’t you eat something before you go?” the bigger alpha suggested, hoping to ease a little of the tension. “You’ll probably feel better if you do.”

Kiyoko and Yumi both agreed to eat, but neither lingered around the table long, as their ultrasound appointment was in less than an hour, and Kiyoko was eager to get in early. Karin couldn’t help but feel for Yumi, who only picked at her food; the poor omega put on a brave smile for her mate, but her nerves showed through, anyway.

“We won’t be too long,” Kiyoko said as she and Yumi found their shoes and their coats. “Though we might stop somewhere for lunch afterward.” 

“Good luck!” Karin said, and sent her sister off with a warm nuzzle.

Yuki was in the kitchen when Karin returned, packing herself an apple and a bottle of juice into her lunchbox. Karin frowned, reluctant to be the one to tell Yuki that she was forbidden to attend school today.

“Your papa wanted you to stay home today, Yuki-chan,” Karin said. “It’s especially dangerous for you to go out by yourself right now. An alpha was killed by the shrine last night!”

“I know Mama and Papa wanted me to stay home,” Yuki said, “but I’ve got an important test today that I can’t miss. Papa would be even more upset if I failed my class!”

Karin shook her head. “I can’t let you go today,” she said. “I’ll call the school so you can make up your test if I have to. But your parents were very clear about no cubs going out today, and I’m not about to go against them, even if it is for school. Keeping you safe is way more important.”

Yuki bristled, but did not argue further, and silently returned the juice to the fridge and the apple to the bowl before slinking dejectedly up to her room. Karin watched her go with a sigh. She hated playing the “bad guy,” but cubs, even older ones like Yuki, didn’t always have a full grasp on all the perils of the shifter world. Even Karin herself, in the innocence and ignorance of her youth, had snuck out while a dangerous alpha was at large, and all so she could see Ai.

Speaking of Ai, Karin’s beloved mate came down the stairs then, dressed sharply in her work attire and with a classy flair of makeup on her face. She met Karin with a peck on the lips.

“Morning, Karin!” she said.

“Morning!” Karin said. She guided Ai to the table, where she sat her down in front of a plate of hearty breakfast. “Made fresh just for you!”

Ai seemed pleased and immediately tucked in. She loved Kasumi’s cooking, of course (everyone did), but there was just something extra special about a meal made with love by her mate. She did note Miyu’s absence, which was peculiar, as their little hellion had a bad habit of waking up at the absolute buttcrack of dawn and pestering Karin until she either went to sleep in the cub’s room or made her breakfast.

“Where’s Miyu-chan this morning?” Ai asked around a mouthful of egg.

“I honestly didn’t question it,” Karin admitted. “I figured she must have been exhausted with everything that’s been going on, so I didn’t wake her up.” She opened up the fridge and retrieved one of Natsumi’s bottles from behind Sayuri’s considerable stash of protein drinks and bottled smoothies. “The front door was apparently left unlocked last night, by the way. We don’t know who did it, but Sayuri wanted me to warn everyone to be more careful, especially right now.”

Ai put her chopsticks down and furrowed her brow. “Don’t you think that’s… weird?” she asked. She stared, silent, at her near-empty plate for a moment before abruptly leaving the table. “I’m just going to check on Miyu.”

Miyu’s room was positioned between Ai’s own room and Sayuri’s. Ai opened the door slowly and quietly, in case her little one was still asleep, but was shocked to find only rumpled blankets and an empty bed.

“Miyu-chan?”

Really, Ai had no need to search the room for her cub, as she could tell at a sniff whether or not she was present, but Ai couldn’t help but check under the bed and in the tiny closet as a cold dread began to spread in her chest. She was determined not to let a maternal frenzy take her just yet, though, so she checked the next logical place for a cub to be in the morning.

“Miyu! Are you in there?”

“It’s Tomori!” came the voice behind the bathroom door. There came a flush and a brief splash of the tap, and then the young omega emerged, looking confused. “What’s wrong, Ai? You cant find Miyu?”

“She wasn’t in her room,” Ai said. “Have you seen her this morning?”

“No, I just woke up,” Tomori replied. “She might be with Suzuko and Emi, though. I think I heard them awake already.”

The pair of them crossed the hall to Suzuko and Emi’s room, where they found the two cubs playing together with their toys, but Miyu was not with them, and neither of them had seen her. Ai’s heart began to pound and her hands began to shake at the peculiarity of it all. Why the hell was the front door unlocked on the same morning that Miyu was mysteriously missing from her bed and absent from all the usual places?

Ai took herself back down the stairs with all the calm she could muster, mindful of not spooking Tomori, who trailed behind her with a worried expression that could mirror that of her father Setsuna. Rather than returning to the kitchen, where she could hear Karin cooing over Natsumi, Ai went to the foyer, where the pack’s shoes were always lined up neatly against the wall, and where Kasumi had installed hooks for everyone’s jackets in the fall and winter. Sayuri’s jacket and boots were absent, as she’d started her shift early, and Setsuna’s were gone, too, as she worked every weekday morning. As for Miyu’s…

“Karin!”

Karin rushed from the kitchen, bristling with baby in arm, at the sound of her mate’s panicked cry. “What’s wrong?!” she demanded, and Ai took her by the shoulders, claws digging painfully in.

“Miyu’s shoes and coat are gone!” Ai cried.

Karin glanced over, and, sure enough, there was only empty space where their daughter’s things should have been. The significance of the unlocked door coupled with Miyu’s missing outerwear hit Karin like a truck, and she could feel her furs fanning out. Tomori, too, was deeply upset and beginning to shift, and she began to wring her own tail with worry.

“Maybe she just went to play outside?” the omega cub suggested. “Wasn’t she upset about not getting to patrol last night?”

“That’s true…” Karin said, and her eyes flicked immediately to the window, where the rain was still lashing up against it. “Sayuri said it was Setsuna who first found the door unlocked. That means if Miyu really did go out… well, she would have had to have done it before Setsuna got up. And we all know she gets up before the sun most of the time!”

“I’m going out there,” Ai said, and began to pull her jacket on.

Karin passed Natsumi to Tomori, who accepted her and hugged her close, more for her own comfort than that of the baby.

“Tomori, will you watch Natsumi for a minute?” Karin asked. “We need to look for Miyu.”

The great roar of the rain as it crashed down onto the neighborhood swallowed up the desperate cries of Miyu’s parents, and washed away any relevant scent trails, replacing them with the thick smells of water and mud. They searched every last tree and shrub on the property, and even checked the love shed, but Miyu was nowhere to be found, and a terror unlike either of them had ever known began to take hold of them. They scrambled back inside, careless of the dirt they were tracking in on their shoes, and began to storm the entire house, screaming for their cub.

“The hell’s going on?!” Ayumu demanded, sitting up in her bed and rubbing her sleepy eyes while Karin tore the room apart. “And what are you doing in my closet?”

“We can’t find Miyu!” Karin cried, and there was a such a rawness in her voice that neither Ayumu nor Rina could find any words to reply, and instead they jumped in immediately, rounding up all the other members of the pack.

Every shifter was woken and every room searched thoroughly, but none found any trace of little Miyu. Ai was crumpled on the floor, breathless despite her frenzied panting and on the verge of a full-blown panic attack as her heart raced into painful overdrive. Karin gathered her up into her lap and held her, but not even her mate’s embrace could save Ai from the devastating reality – their daughter was missing, and had very likely met with the dangerous alphas of Anther.

 

Leah met with Himeno again on Monday morning when she returned to the apartment after taking Emma to school. The beta woman greeted her with a polite bow, which Leah found a little too formal, and to which she replied with a simple but friendly nod.

“It’s nice to see you again, Leah-san!” Himeno said. “I’m about to go to work at the moment, but… Well, if you aren’t too busy today, would you like to get lunch together? I mean! I understand if you don’t, but…”

There was something endearing about the way Himeno blushed and stumbled on her words and second-guessed herself. If Leah didn’t know any better she might have thought the beta was attracted to her, but Leah did know better, and she knew Himeno was probably just shy and hungry for companionship after moving to a new area. Regardless, Leah wasn’t just going to let the poor woman eat her lunch alone, so she agreed to meet up, and then made a hasty call to her workplace explaining that her bowels were exploding out of her body and that she needed the day off.

That was how, after a lengthy nap, Leah ended up at the very same restaurant which, many years earlier, she’d gone with Ruby to discuss the matter of Ruby’s pregnancy. Now, rather than the redheaded omega, Leah was sat across from the pretty beta with the beginnings of grey beginning to streak through her otherwise black hair. Himeno smiled warmly at her.

“Thanks for coming, Leah-san,” she said. “I just thought it might be nice for us to get to know each other a little better. I mean, we are neighbors, after all.”

“I don’t mind at all,” Leah replied. “So how’ve you been settling in? Akihabara’s not so bad, right?”

“It’s not bad,” Himeno agreed. “But I haven’t had a lot of time to get to know the area. Work keeps me busy, you know… But I think I have some time off next weekend! I might go exploring!”

“I could go with you,” Leah said, unthinkingly, and then caught her tongue. “Er, if you want, I mean. I’ve lived here for like twenty years, so I know all the best spots.”

“Twenty years? Wow!” Himeno said, and laughed. “Well, I’d love to have such an experienced tour guide!”

Himeno’s shyness seemed to melt away as the pair of them chatted over their lunch, and Leah found that beyond her initial timidity she was actually quite a bubbly and bright-spirited woman. They spoke at length about all the sights to see and places to visit and food to eat in Tokyo, and composed a sort of mental checklist of activities to enjoy when they met again the following weekend. When the conversation at last began to wane and dwindle to friendly silence, Himeno spoke up again, this time about a different subject.

“Who was that girl with you at the store the other night?” she asked. “Was that your daughter?”

“Oh yeah, it was, that’s my Emma,” Leah said, a twinkle in her eye as she thought of her beloved cub.

Himeno didn’t miss the brightening of Leah’s features. “Well, she’s a very pretty girl,” she said. “You and her father must be proud!”

That casual remark caught Leah off-guard. It hadn’t occurred to her that Himeno might not realize she was an alpha; shifters were so used to gleaning information about others by scent that the thought of someone without such an ability was almost beyond them. She sat there, chewing her lip nervously, as she struggled to think of a reply. It was always that way with betas, in that it was nearly impossible to tell who might react favorably or at least neutrally to the admission of shifterhood, and who might react unfavorably.

“Er… Yeah, that,” Leah said, her voice quite strained. She suddenly wondered if perhaps she ought to hide her alphahood from the pretty Himeno, but then, she thought, she might have to follow through with a “husband” cover-up story, and Leah wasn’t keen on having a husband, imaginary or otherwise. She told the truth. “I, uh, actually, Himeno, you probably can’t tell, but uh… I-I am her father. I’m an alpha.”

Himeno seemed shocked at first, with her eyes going wide and her eyebrows shooting up, but, after a moment, she straightened up and nodded her head in understanding. “Oh, I had no idea!” she said. “I’m sorry to make an assumption like that! It’s just, you know, there aren’t always that many shifters around, and even if there are, some people don’t make it obvious. Like you, for example, I didn’t suspect a thing!”

Relief fluttered in Leah’s chest at Himeno’s near-instant acceptance. “It’s different for people like me,” she said. “We can tell who’s an alpha, beta, or omega just by the way they naturally smell.”

“So then you must be married to an omega, then, right?” Himeno asked. “I’ve seen another woman with you before – about the same age as you, but long, black hair? Is that your wife?”

Leah cackled at the very idea. “What? No way!” she said. “That’s Dia, my sister-in-law. Hahaha, me with Dia! No, no, but Dia’s sister is my daughter’s mother. Emma stays with her during the week, and I get her on weekends.”

The talk of custody seemed to make Himeno remember something, and she suddenly began tidying the table and gathering her things. Leah cocked her head.

“What’s up?” the alpha asked, hoping her companion hadn’t changed her mind about her shifterhood.

“I just remembered I’ve got to pick up the kids in fifteen minutes,” Himeno hurriedly explained as she shouldered her purse. “Thank you so much for spending time with me today, Leah-san! I really did have fun. Would you still like to meet next weekend?”

“Of course I would,” Leah said. “I’ll catch ya later.”

Leah watched her go, and felt a sudden, sinking feeling in her gut. She didn’t know why she felt as disappointed as she did that Himeno had children… Well, truly, inside, she did know, but didn’t want to admit that she found the beta woman attractive and had hoped for mutual interest. At this point in her life, it seemed a little too much to ask. Spirits lowered, she packed herself up and headed home, where she found Dia already there and pacing restlessly around the apartment with her phone pressed to her ear.

“Alright… Okay. So you’re heading out shortly, then,” Dia was saying to the person on the phone. “I will, don’t worry. Okay. Yes… Okay, be careful. Bye.”

Even after she finished her call, Dia continued to pace and suck her lip and peer occasionally out the window, seemingly lost in her thoughts, and Leah gave her a questioning look.

“Did something happen?” Leah asked.

“Miyu’s apparently gone missing,” Dia explained. “They think she went off sometime during the night, because they found the front door unlocked in the morning. Kanan and Mari are heading to Numazu right away to help with the search, and Riko and Yoshiko are going with them, too. Sarah and I will probably stay with the rest of Aqours until they get back, just for safety, since You will be the only alpha left.”

“Oh shit,” was Leah’s reply. She wasn’t all that close to Miyu (the kid could be a pain in the ass sometimes), but it was still unnerving to have one of the family’s cubs missing. All shifters knew that time was of the essence when it came to lost cubs, because there was always the risk of rutting or territorial adult alphas striking them down, or worse, snatching them up for their own unsavory purposes.

“Is there anything I should do?” Leah finally asked, hoping to make herself useful.

“Just keep the place clean,” Dia said. “We’ll call you if anything comes up.”

She gave Leah a nuzzle, a rare gesture of affection between the two, and then left with a suitcase in tow. Sarah didn’t seem to have come home yet, so Leah sighed heavily and plopped herself down in front of the TV. As though it wasn’t bad enough that Leah’s chances with the attractive woman one floor up were reduced to near nothing, now a cub had to disappear, too? The familiar teeth of anxiety began to twist her guts and gnaw at her nerves, and Leah, left with little to occupy her, curled up with a blanket that smelled of her sister and called to see if she could get tomorrow off, too.

 

Yumi was uncomfortable. A strange woman’s hands and a peculiar wand tool were on her cold, gel-slathered belly, and she couldn’t remember ever needing to pee quite so badly as she did now. Kiyoko was beside her, holding her hand and occasionally kissing it, but her mate’s eye was focused entirely on the screen before them. As the technician moved the wand over Yumi’s still-flat belly, the image of the tiny, fast-developing cub within became visible.

“Look at her, Yumi!” Kiyoko cried at the sight of the little being.

The technician pointed out everything about the cub – her head, her little hands and feet, her ribs and her spine, her stub of a tail… Kiyoko asked many pertinent questions about the cub’s health and development, and what was and was not normal in the course of her growth and of Yumi’s pregnancy. Yumi stayed mostly silent, instead staring blankly at the form of what was to be her cub by next spring. The wand rolled once again, and from this new angle a quick pulsing became visible on the screen, and both Yumi and Kiyoko recognized it as a tiny heartbeat.

Kiyoko’s own heart began to race, and she thought it might just explode from the joy welling in her chest. “Yumi,” she breathed, and bent to nuzzle her wife tenderly. “Look at her. Our baby has a heart!”

Yumi returned Kiyoko’s nuzzle and placed a soft kiss upon her lips, but that was more out of affection for Kiyoko than wonder at the cub. Up until this point, Yumi had detached herself somewhat from the situation, preferring to focus her attention on school and on Kiyoko, but now, with the fetal heart pulsing right before her eyes, it all became frighteningly real. She suddenly found it hard to swallow and even harder to speak, and she felt with every fiber of her being that she needed to leave, quickly.

“Excuse me,” Yumi said, and pulled herself up from the examination table. She left the room, paying no mind to Kiyoko, who called after her, and sped directly to the bathroom, which she’d seen near the office on the way in.

The first thing she did after locking herself in was relieve her aching bladder, as it was quite close to emptying itself already, and she didn’t need that right now. Once free of her liquid burden, Yumi found that her head was at least a little clearer, but that was almost a curse, as now she could think only of the thing that was growing inside of her. And how awful it was to call it a thing! But that is what it was to Yumi – no matter how she tried to convince herself that it was beautiful, the proof of the love between herself and Kiyoko, it remained simply a _thing_ which had housed itself in her body and grew stronger every day by sapping Yumi’s own energy.

It couldn’t have been more than a few minutes that Yumi stood there, bent over the sink and trembling with inexplicable dread, but it felt like an age had passed when there finally came a small knock on the door.

“Yumi?”

It was Kiyoko. Yumi hurriedly turned on the tap and began to wash her hands, as though she’d just finished using the toilet. “Just a minute!” she called in reply.

Kiyoko was there waiting for her when she opened the door, and Yumi felt a pang of guilt for the deep concern in her alpha’s kind green eye.

“Are you okay?” Kiyoko asked, and brushed a strand of hair from her mate’s eyes.

“I’m fine,” Yumi lied. She took Kiyoko’s hands in her own and squeezed them, hoping that her mate couldn’t tell she was still shaking. “I thought I was going to wet myself, so…”

Kiyoko frowned, but chose not to argue, and instead drew Yumi close as they walked back to the exam room. She could smell her mate’s fear plain as day, but she knew also that Yumi was putting on a strong front just for her, so it wasn’t until after the exam, when they were back in the privacy of the car and buckling up to go home, that Kiyoko spoke up.

“Are you okay, Yumi?”

Yumi at last seemed to wilt under the pressure, and she answered honestly. “I can’t do this, Kiyoko,” she said, head bowed. “I can’t carry this cub, I can’t be a mother. I just can’t, I can’t do it. It’s too much.”

Kiyoko reached over and cupped her omega’s cheek, gently stroking the thin layer of fur there with her thumb. “I wish I could change your mind,” she said. “But… if you still don’t want the cub after today, then, I mean, we could always just…”

“It’s not that I don’t want it,” Yumi interrupted quickly, fearful of hurting her mate. “In a way, I… I don’t know. But I’m not the right omega for the job.”

They’d been over this countless times since the discovery of the pregnancy, which was merely a week ago, and, frankly, Kiyoko was over it. She took both of Yumi’s hands in her own and kissed them.

“You _are_ the right omega for the job,” she said. “I mean… Ah, how can I make you understand this? You’re the woman I chose to marry and mate with. There’s no one I’d choose over you, Yumi.”

Yumi’s ears drooped low. How could she make Kiyoko understand her feelings without absolutely breaking her in the process? Before she could come up with anything to say, Kiyoko pressed her forehead to Yumi’s, rumbling softly.

“At the end of the day, I would never force you to do something you don’t want to do,” Kiyoko said. “Maybe this isn’t the right time for a baby. But… once you finish school, you know, get started in your career, then maybe… we can try again?”

The reluctance in her mate’s voice tore at Yumi. She pressed a kiss to Kiyoko’s lips, and Kiyoko responded in kind, driven by the intoxicating scent of Yumi’s pregnancy, until they were far more heated than they had any right to be in the obstetrician’s parking lot. Yumi, feeling a little more lighthearted after their kisses, eyed the bump in her mate’s pants with a chuckle.

“Kiyoko!”

“I’m sorry!” Kiyoko said, plainly embarrassed by her body’s reaction to Yumi’s scent. She pressed a futile hand into her crotch. “You just smell nice, that’s all.”

Yumi smiled and reached over to scratch her alpha’s shoulder affectionately. Gods, Kiyoko was just sweet as could be; how could Yumi ever bear to disappoint her? “Let’s just go and get some lunch,” Yumi said. “We can talk more about all this later. I might also be able to help with your pants problem…”

Kiyoko agreed, still blushing heavily, and pulled out her phone to check the time. It was only 9 o’clock, quite early for lunch, but they hadn’t eaten much for breakfast in their rush to reach their appointment on time. It seemed, however, that their meal and their pleasure would have to wait; three missed calls from Karin also showed on the screen, and a message that simply read, “Please come home.” Kiyoko passed her phone to Yumi as she began to back out of the parking space.

“Can you call Karin and see what’s going on?”

Yumi did, and all her furs stood on end as she listened to her sister-in-law’s panicked rant over the phone. “We’ll be right there,” she assured Karin, and then hung up. She turned to Kiyoko, who had already picked up on the unease and was beginning to bristle. “Kiyoko-chan, we need to go home right away! Miyu’s gone missing!”

 

Nozomi spent the duration of the trip to Uchiura staring blankly at the passing scenery, and trying but failing to calm her racing heart. The news that her little grandcub was missing while predatory alphas prowled the neighborhood nearly sent Nozomi into a complete and total panic. She’d been through a lot with her own cubs, and had come frighteningly close to losing both of them and her mate, too, but never had anyone gone missing, where she couldn’t watch out for them and protect them. If she herself was feeling this way, she could only imagine the terror in her poor Karin’s heart.

Nozomi turned her attention from the highway to glance at her mate. Eli was speeding, and it was terribly dangerous, but she didn’t dare tell the alpha to slow down; there was a fierce and determined fire burning in her mate’s blue eyes, a fire with which Nozomi was well familiar. Even as Eli’s body began to slow down and her once-golden fur turned all to white, there was still tremendous alpha strength in the claws that now gripped the steering wheel so tightly, and Eli would never hesitate to use them on anyone who threatened the safety of her pack.

Honoka, Umi, and Kotori were seated in the back, and all were silent and brooding. With the stakes so high, Eli and Nozomi had decided that the secret of Yuki’s involvement with Kensuke and possibly a dangerous pack was one too serious to keep any longer. It was news that was understandably ill-received, and all three of them were determined to help. Kanan and Mari were traveling in their own car with Riko and Yoshiko, and were probably much farther ahead, as Mari wasn’t exactly a slow driver, even compared to Eli’s frantic speed.

It was storming when they arrived at the cubs’ home. Rain fell in blinding sheets while the wind blasted it sideways and bent the branches of the neighborhood trees. Just walking to the front door left them with drenched clothes and fur plastered down flat to the skin beneath. Karin flung herself at her parents the instant they stepped inside, careless of soaking her own clothes.

“Thank you for coming, Mama, Mom,” Karin said as she nuzzled them both desperately, their familiar scents filling her with a new hope.

“Of course we came!” Eli said, and kissed her daughter’s cheek. She glanced at Kanan and Mari, who were already present and pacing restlessly alongside Ai. “What’s the plan?”

“The sooner we start searching, the better,” Sayuri said from her place at the front window. She’d come home early, but was still dressed sharp in her police gear. “The rain isn’t gonna make it easy, though… Papa, Riko, you know the area pretty well, don’t you?”

“Well enough,” Kanan replied. “I mean, there are more developments out here now than when I was growing up. But for the most part, yes, I can manage.”

“It’s the rain I’m worried about,” Riko said from her place beneath the pile of her grandcubs. “Besides getting ourselves soaked, it’s going to be nearly impossible to track any scents in this weather! Most of the important evidence has probably already been washed away.”

“We still have to try,” Karin said. “Ryo has the most information on this Anther pack, but she can’t get away from work until tomorrow afternoon, and I’m not leaving Miyu out there until then. Come on, we’ll split into two groups.”

“Wait, wait!” came Kasumi’s voice from the nearby storage closet. “Take these with you! I originally got them for the cubs to take to school on rainy days, but I can always get more.”

The storm was punishing even with the additional protection provided by Kasumi’s plastic ponchos. Still, Karin plodded on at the head of her search party, despite the blinding rain that lashed at her face and stung her eyes. It was slow going, agonizingly so, but they eventually came to the end of their street and met the main road, which ran alongside the coast. The ocean was restless, roaring and crashing mightily against the shore, and Karin’s chest tightened at the thought of her little cub getting swallowed up by it.

“I still can’t catch any scents,” Ai shouted above the thunderous din of the rain and the sea. “It just smells like rainwater!”

“Scent alone won’t help us now,” Eli said. “Let’s head for that shrine and look for other clues.”

The trek to the shrine was far worse than their initial journey from home to main street, as there were fewer trees and buildings to shield them from the sky’s onslaught. Ai pressed in close to Karin, shivering with cold and wet but determined to keep searching for their little one, and her very presence lifted Karin’s dangerously dismal spirits. To their relief, the furious downpour eased into a mere shower by the time they began to climb the stone steps that led up to the shrine.

“There’s nothing!” Karin snarled when they at last scaled the mountain and were greeted with only squelching mud and the scents of wet earth and rotting leaves. Even the evidence from the earlier crime scene had been washed away from the stone path, and the blood scent was near-completely diluted.

“Let’s just look around,” Eli said, and gave her cub a comforting pat.

Kiyoko went to the shrine first, sniffing around the sacred structure for any trace of little Miyu or foreign alphas. A tiny mewl caught her by surprise, and a cat emerged from behind a broken slat at the base of the shrine. Kiyoko knelt to scratch behind its ears, and chuckled at how dry the animal was compared to just about everything else around them.

“Hi, kitty cat,” she said. “We’re looking for a cub. Have you seen her?”

The cat only stared curiously at the alpha, but when Kiyoko leaned closer, she caught just the slightest hint of cub on the little creature’s fur. She pressed her face gently to the cat, drawing in the animal’s natural scent alongside rain and earth and what was, upon closer inspection, unmistakably Miyu. Kiyoko caught Karin’s attention and waved her over, careful not to shout or make any movements that might startle the cat away.

“I can smell Miyu on this cat,” Kiyoko said.

Karin pressed her face to the little beast’s fur as her sister had done, and sure enough, Miyu’s cub scent lingered there beneath the smell of wild cat. Karin swallowed thickly, desperate not to cry for her daughter in front of the others – especially Ai – but she felt herself overcome with longing for her little one.

“I wish you could talk,” she said, and gave the cat an affectionate few rubs.

The cat purred and pressed itself up against Karin’s hand, eager for more, and Karin was happy to deliver it for the only good clue they’d found all day. At the sound of approaching footsteps, though, it grew tense, and launched itself away from Karin and disappeared back underneath the shrine. Karin turned to see Setsuna and Kanan coming up the stairs, heads bowed against the freezing wind.

“Have you found anything?” Kanan asked.

“Just this cat,” Karin replied, and pointed to the small hole in the shrine. “It had Miyu’s scent on it.”

Kanan folded her arms and furrowed her brow. “Well, we at least know that Miyu came this way,” she said. “We haven’t had any luck on our end. There aren’t any trails to follow, thanks to the rain, and maybe some clever planning on Anther’s part, if they’re even involved in this. We’ve got to keep looking, but I’m worried that…” She shook her head. “No. Come on, let’s just keep searching this area.”

The two groups reunited and, thankful at least for the rain to have passed by, spent the remainder of the day’s light calling for Miyu and inspecting every tree, every muddied print, every passerby, and even spoke to some of the townspeople regarding the murder of the park ranger and any other suspicious activity. Few folks had any valuable information, and indeed most were as baffled at the news of Anther as they were of the murder. It was still early when the light disappeared, leaving the search party shivering in the deep autumn darkness without so much as a hint regarding Miyu’s whereabouts.

“What are we going to do?” Karin wondered, her voice cracking as the tears she’d tried to hold back all day at last began to spill out. There was a crushing weight upon her heart, one which she feared she may carry forever if her beloved Miyu didn’t turn up soon.

“We won’t give up,” Eli said, her voice as strong and resolute as ever. “We should go home and eat and rest a bit, but not for too long. We’ll break up into smaller groups and keep searching and gathering information through the night.”

Ai spent the walk home pressed up close to Karin again, and Karin realized then just how badly her mate was shivering. She put a supportive arm about her omega’s waist.

“Are you okay, Ai?” she asked.

“I’m fine,” Ai replied, though her teeth chattered and her nose trickled steadily. Spending the day in the rain and the chilly winds after a week of the flu was just asking for trouble, and she knew it, but her health be damned if it meant her cub would come home safe.

Fresh, dry clothes and a hot meal awaited them back at home. Umi had prepared a hearty dinner despite Kasumi’s protests about guests cooking, and it was well-received after a hard and freezing day’s search. Karin could only pick at her food, though, as the anxiety continued to claw at her insides. After all, how could she sit here and eat and warm herself while her little cub was out there, lost and possibly cold and hungry, or being tortured or worse at the hands of some perverted alpha?

“You need to eat, little cub,” Nozomi finally said after several minutes of watching Karin rearrange her vegetables. “You won’t be any use out on the search if you don’t have any strength to go on.”

“I know, Mama,” Karin said, and forced a mouthful down.

It was agreed (with some reluctance on Karin’s part) that Eli, Kanan, and Sayuri would take the first after-dark shift. After they set out, Karin spent some time warming herself beneath the kotatsu while Ai nursed their hungry little Natsumi.

“She was fussy all afternoon,” Nozomi said. “I tried to soothe her and give her a bottle, but she really just needed you, Ai. It might be best if you stayed in for the night…”

Ai was about to protest, but Karin cut her off. “Mama’s right,” she said. “I saw how cold you were out there, and your nose running like that! I don’t want you getting sick again. Please just stay home.”

Ai’s shoulders sank, defeated. “I know I should,” she admitted, “but I just feel like I’d be abandoning Miyu or something. I know it’s dumb.”

“It’s not dumb,” Nozomi said. “It’s natural. But you have a duty to _both_ of your cubs. Eli and the other alphas are working hard so you don’t have to. If you do decide to go out again, at least wait until tomorrow so you can keep Natsumi calm through the night.”

Ai nodded and bent to kiss her baby, who now gazed up at her with sleepy blue eyes. She buried her face into the cub’s downy fur, failing now to contain the sobs that wracked her throat, and Karin immediately pressed up against her, whispering reassurances into her ear and kissing her hair sweetly.

“Everything will be okay,” Karin told her. But would it really, with their cub gone now for an entire stormy day?

 

In the kitchen, Setsuna and her parents busied themselves with clearing the table and preparing the dirty plates for the dishwasher. Riko and Yoshiko had clearly missed their daughter, and casually brushed sides and tails with her as they passed each other. It was also plain to them that Setsuna was not quite herself – she’d always had somewhat of an awkward demeanor, but the young alpha seemed restless somehow, distant and distracted, and they wanted to get to the bottom of things.

“Why don’t we get a drink and have a chat outside for a while?” Riko suggested once all the dishes were safely in the washer.

“Can we have hot chocolate, Riri?!” Suzuko asked excitedly, as she’d overheard the adults from the connected dining area. The other cubs all agreed heartily, and began clamoring for their chocolatey delight.

“Alright, alright!” Riko laughed. “Settle down, girls, we can have hot chocolate.”

It wasn’t quite the kind of drink that Riko had in mind, but the treat’s warmth filled them nicely in the chill of the late October night. She and Yoshiko found that they had to do very little prodding to get Setsuna to start talking.

“I’m glad you came, Mama, Riri,” Setsuna said. “For Miyu, of course. But for me, too… I’ve been kind of needing to talk to you about something…”

“You can tell us anything,” Yoshiko assured her.

“I-I know that,” Setsuna said. “It’s just… a little embarrassing.” She took a brief pause, during which she stared, frowning, at the steam swirling up from her mug. “My… my marriage… hasn’t been, uh, doing so well lately.”

Both Riko and Yoshiko seemed surprised by that.

“Really?” asked Yoshiko. “Is it about the…”

“Since we lost the cub, things haven’t been the same,” Setsuna said, sparing her mother from having to say it aloud. Her cheeks reddened deeply beneath her fur as she continued. “And then the situation with Yuki happened, which has only made things worse. I just feel like we can’t… be, uh, intimate. Anymore. I mean, it’s mostly my fault, Kasumi wants to… you know, she wants to, but I just can’t… uh… I just can’t stay… aroused? And I know it hurts her.”

Poor Setsuna was clearly mortified at having said such a thing to her own parents, but the older shifters simply nodded in understanding.

“That can happen sometimes when things aren’t going quite right in other parts of your life,” Riko said. “It’s a stress response. It has nothing to do with your fitness as a mate, or whether or not you still love her. But without _some_ level of intimacy, your relationship is going to fall apart. So my advice is, if mating isn’t working right now, just touch her, hug and kiss her, you know, just talk about your day together! It’ll be over quick if you don’t make at least a little time for each other.”

“Riri’s right,” Yoshiko said. “We’ve been married for a long time, you know! You’ve been with Kasumi for a good while now, too, so I’m sure you guys can work it out.”

Setsuna twitched her ears and curled her tail sheepishly. Truly, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d sat down with Kasumi simply to enjoy her presence; they were usually just trying and failing to have sex, dealing with the cubs, or else Setsuna was rushing off to work and not returning until dinnertime. “Thanks, Mama and Riri.”

The back door slid open then, and two cubs appeared, the cousins Kasane and Aya, both grinning ear to ear.

“Riri, you wanna come draw with us?” Kasane asked, her tail swishing.

Riko chuckled. The cubs knew that piano and drawing were two of their grandalpha’s favorite activities, and were always eager to participate in both with her. “Of course I do,” she said. “I’ll be right there.”

Yoshiko put her hands on her hips in mock offense. “Well, what about me?” she asked. “Don’t I get to come draw, too?”

“Yes!” the cubs replied, and scurried back inside, where the other young ones (and Honoka) were gathered around a huge roll of drawing paper and armed with all manner of art supplies. It was a welcome distraction from the stress of having one of their packmates missing.

Yoshiko left Setsuna with a wink and a subtle nod towards the stairs. Riko also gave her an encouraging nudge.

“We’ll play with the cubs,” the older alpha said. “Go on.”

So Setsuna made her way up the stairs, her furs still out and her tail stiff with nerves. It was ridiculous, being nervous about spending quality time with her own beloved wife, and yet here she was, already mentally replaying her recent and multiple instances of erectile difficulty and working herself into a mess before she even set foot in the bedroom. Little did she know, Kasumi’s parents had also given their daughter some similar advice.

“Hi, sweetie,” Setsuna greeted as she came into the room.

Kasumi quickly marked her page and shut the book she was reading, one of Setsuna’s favorite light novels which Kasumi usually pretended to be uninterested in. “Hey.” Her eyes roved over her mate, who was fully shifted and snug in a heavy winter coat. “Uh, are you going out?”

Only then did Setsuna realize she was still dressed for the outdoors, and she began to wriggle her way out of her clothes with more difficulty than was really necessary. Kasumi watched the awkward struggle with an amused grin; few things were cuter than her Setsuna doing her best.

“Okay, let me help you,” Kasumi said after a time, eager to touch her alpha and even more so to undress her.

Setsuna at last shrugged out of her coat while Kasumi’s deft fingers unclasped her pants and rolled down the zipper. The omega flicked her tongue subtly over her lips at the sight of the slight bump in Setsuna’s underwear, and she couldn’t help but think on how it’d been a good minute since she’d seen it be much more than slight. She saw the alpha’s tail begin to curl, and caught herself then; the focus tonight was supposed to be on Setsuna herself, not the state of her cock. She flicked her eyes back upward.

“I missed you,” Kasumi said. “Let’s talk.”

Setsuna quickly found some comfortable sleep clothes and then slid herself into the bed with her wife. Keeping Riri’s advice in mind, she made it a point to press herself closely to Kasumi and admire her scent and her ever-cute face. They cuddled together, rumbling, for a time, until Kasumi at last decided to ask her most burning question.

“Do you still love me?”

That caught Setsuna off-guard, and she stumbled over her own tongue in an attempt to answer.

“What?! Kasumi, th-that’s…! Of course I still love you, I-I-I’ve never not loved you!”

Kasumi chuckled, but her smile was thin. “Okay, let me rephrase,” she said. “Do you… Are you still attracted to me?”

Setsuna was, once again, stunned. She knew her mate well enough to realize that this wasn’t just classic Kasumi-style teasing, either; though the omega tried to play it cool and casual, Setsuna could tell from her lowered eyes, her slightly-raised fur, and the gentle thumps of her tail against the mattress that Kasumi was seeking an honest answer. She brushed some of the hair from Kasumi’s face and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead.

“Not once in my life have I ever found you unattractive,” Setsuna said.

Kasumi’s eyes flicked upward now to meet Setsuna’s, and some of her signature mischief had returned to them.

“Oh?” she said. “Even when I shit myself giving birth?”

“W-what-”

“Don’t answer that,” Kasumi said, and laughed for real as she nuzzled herself into her mate’s chest. “But… You _can_ tell the truth, you know. I mean, I know I’m not as skinny as I used to be – five cubs and the housewife life will do that to you. And I haven’t really had the time or the motivation to do my makeup lately, either… Why bother when I don’t leave the house all that much? Anyway, I’m sorry about that. Hell, my sister is looking better than me these days-”

“Kasumi, stop,” Setsuna pleaded. “You’re as beautiful as you ever were! Honest! And I promise I’m still very attracted to you. It’s just that… recent times have been really hard for me. I just haven’t been able to focus… I’m not coping well with everything that’s been going on. I’m really sorry.”

Kasumi didn’t seem entirely satisfied with that explanation; in fact, she seemed downright pissed. She shoved away from Setsuna, bristling. “You think you’re the only one having a hard time?” she snapped. “Did you just forget that that little cub was mine, too? It was _ours_. And Yuki-chan is _our_ daughter! What happens to her affects me, too! And even now, with Miyu – she’s a little shit, yeah, but she’s Karin and Ai’s little shit, and a part of our pack. How do you think it makes _me_ feel when all these things happen and you just- just run off to your job to hide all day?! I _need_ you! What part of that don’t you get?”

Setsuna was speechless for the third time. Both her ears and her tail drooped as the terrible weight of shame descended on her. She really was that selfish, wasn’t she? Kasumi had already turned away from her, silent and clearly fighting tears, but Setsuna grabbed her and held her tight.

“I’m sorry, Kasumi,” she said. “I love you so much. Please believe me. I should never have been away from you!”

To Setsuna’s relief, Kasumi returned the embrace, and desperately. “I need you,” she said once again, and her heart fluttered when Setsuna began to kiss at her neck.

This was the first time in months that the pair of them had allowed themselves to fully grieve their loss together and to release their many pent-up stresses, to connect and rekindle the slowly-dwindling fire between them. It was incredibly relieving to touch one another, to feel the other’s warmth and breathe her scent without any interruptions from crying cubs or blaring alarm clocks or threats of an early-morning shift. The slow transition from emotional, passionate embrace to desperate sexual union was near-seamless, and Setsuna just thanked her lucky stars that her cock was apparently in working order tonight.

The specter of failure and sorry performance still loomed over poor Setsuna, though. It’d been so long since she’d been inside her mate, she wondered if she’d be able to induce the same sort of bliss as before, or if her sexual ability had been permanently marred by her months-long physical and emotional absence. It was a ridiculous thought, for sure, but Setsuna was a worrier even in the best of times, and she tried her best to take her parents’ advice and simply focus on Kasumi. The omega’s scent was rich and sweet, her fur was as soft as ever, and her slick warmth squeezing around Setsuna was heavenly. These wonderful things kept Setsuna stiff and pumping for far longer than she even believed possible anymore.

“Setsuna…!”

At some point Kasumi began to moan, and it was also at that point that Setsuna’s thus-far solid concentration began to crumble back into the dust of impotence. It was important – so terribly important! – that she bring Kasumi to orgasm at last, if only to prove her passion and her devotion, and yet the devil of anxiety had other plans, and it began to whisper insecurities into the poor alpha’s ears. What if she didn’t make it long enough to give Kasumi her long-awaited climax? What a poor mate she’d be then – as though she wasn’t one already! Would Kasumi hate her, or doubt her affection? Probably both! And what about the new baby they’d been wishing for? Even if they somehow reached the point of trying again, Setsuna wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to keep it up to make the baby in the first place. Maybe, even after sixteen years as mates, Kasumi deserved a better, fitter alpha. Oh, her marriage was cracking right down to the very foundation…

“Get off me!”

So caught up was Setsuna in her mental beatdown of herself that she failed to notice (or perhaps chose to deny) that her cock had gone floppy and useless inside her mate, despite her strong and steady strokes. She immediately withdrew and sat up, covering the shamefully shrinking alpha organ with folded hands.

“Kasumi, I’m sorry…”

Kasumi sat up, too, her ears twitching and her tail curled around her body for her to clutch at.

“Look… It’s fine,” she said, her eyes practically everywhere except for on Setsuna. “We shouldn’t have done this, anyway. Let’s just go to sleep.”

So they gathered their clothes and redressed and settled back beneath the blanket, but Setsuna couldn’t bear to stay on her side of the bed knowing how lonely Kasumi had been. She scooted in close and curled her body protectively around her omega’s, and, rather than being met with a snarl or a snap, she received a soft and contented rumble. That would do for now.

 

Miyu came awake slowly. Her entire body felt heavy and sluggish, and her muscles ached something fierce, as did her throat. As a young cub, she’d never experienced such complete physical exhaustion before, and it was frightening. Her eyes were barely open, but she could sense a warm omega body nearby, and she instinctively sought it out for comfort.

“Mama…”

A soft hand brushed against her hair, and the woman leaned down to kiss her forehead. Miyu’s eyes shot open at the unfamiliar scent, and she found herself completely awake and alert as she realized that the omega was _not_ her mother, that this was _not_ her home, and that something very terrible had happened. Bits and pieces of the previous night came back in terrifying flashes – the raw, musky scent of so many adult alphas, the savage, full-bodied roars, and more blood than a little cub could even begin to comprehend. She began to pant heavily as her fur poked through, but her body was far too worn to go through another shift, so she cowered instead in the farthest corner of the bed.

“There, there, little one,” the omega said, her voice soft and soothing. “Everything’s okay. You’re safe here with me.”

Miyu very desperately wanted to believe that she was safe with the strange omega, but her cub instincts were powerful, and she physically could not bring herself to relax. She snarled hoarsely, but the young woman seemed experienced in these matters, and spoke gently to her.

“There now, little alpha, everything’s gonna be alright. I won’t hurt you.”

It took a long time – she wasn’t sure how long, exactly – but Miyu’s snarls eventually died down to tiny rumbles, and the omega took the weary cub into her arms. Miyu felt an intense loneliness then; this omega clearly wasn’t out to harm her, but no one in the world could compare to her own mother.

“I want my mama,” Miyu said, her voice scratchy and barely audible now.

“I know you do, love,” the omega said, and rocked the cub like one of her own. “You’ll be okay, though. Everything’s okay. Can you tell me your name?”

“Miyu,” the little alpha said. “Well, Miyu Ayase.”

“Okay, Miyu, my name is Misaki,” the omega said. “I’ll take care of you while you’re here, okay? If you need anything at all, just ask me.” She laid the child down then, and tucked her snugly beneath the blanket.

“I know where my mama works,” Miyu said. “And I know her phone number, too. Can I call her? She can come pick me up.”

“In the morning, Miyu-chan,” Misaki replied. “It’s too late to call anyone now. Just try and get some sleep, okay? I’m right here with you.”

Miyu obeyed and curled up into a sorry little ball, though she felt far too anxious and confused to sleep soundly. She hoped that perhaps this strange room in a strange house with a strange omega was all just a silly dream, and she’d wake up tomorrow safe and happy in her own bed. She knew, of course, that it _wasn’t_ – it was simply comforting to hope. More invasive than the hopeful thoughts, though, were the hopeless ones, the ones in which she imagined never seeing her parents or her pack again, and it was crushing. She tried very hard not to cry, but the idea of being separated from her one and only family was too much for her young heart to bear.

“Easy now…”

Misaki rubbed slow and soothing circles in the crying cub’s back, and began to hum a gentle lullaby in hopes of calming her. It took time, but Miyu’s mentally- and physically-exhausted body eventually did give in to sleep, and one so deep that she didn’t so much as stir when the morning sun began to filter through the curtains and Misaki took her leave.

The house was quiet, but the warm aroma of coffee hung in the air, and Misaki knew then that her mate was up already. She found him alone in the living room, taking his coffee with the morning news, and apparently in a foul mood by the way his jaw was set stiff and his eyes hardened. Misaki perched tentatively at the opposite end of the couch, hoping to gauge his temper.

“Something wrong, Noboru?”

Noboru took a deep breath and set his mug aside. “Alphas on our trail,” he said. “A whole pack’s worth. They’re after the cub, if I had to guess. There’s no other reason for them to be searching so hard, unless…” He scratched his short black beard thoughtfully. “Well, no. Kensuke’s been lying low for a few days, so… Well, how is that cub, anyway? Did she wake up?”

“She woke up sometime last night, and, poor thing, she was too exhausted to even shift again,” said Misaki. “She’s fast asleep now. But… Noboru, I don’t think I can do this. It’s just too cruel for me, taking a cub from its family. Won’t you consider just taking her back to where you found her? She won’t thrive here, and it’s not worth the dealing with that other pack.”

“I don’t remember asking what you thought about it,” Noboru replied, cold venom seeping into his voice. “If you won’t take care of her, then feel free to pass her off to one of the more capable omegas. There are plenty of them. Though at that point I’d be better off taking a new mate, too.”

“Noboru!” Misaki clenched her fists, and her entire body tensed to shift, but she held back for fear of her alpha’s fury.

“We’ve been together how long? And yet you still haven’t given me any cubs,” Noboru said, and his lips curled up in distaste. “If I’d known I was pairing with a barren bitch I would have skipped you entirely. Now here I am trying to give you a chance to prove yourself by raising this alpha cub, and you’re just going to throw it away?”

Misaki’s fur at last burst through at that insult, and she showed her fangs defiantly. “I can’t help that!” she cried. “But this has nothing to do with me, or with your pride, Noboru. It’s about the cub – take her back to her real family. She won’t make it in Anther.”

Noboru sprang to his feet, shifting and drawing himself up to his full, impressive height. He snarled a deep and terrible warning at his omega. “You don’t call the shots around here, Misaki, I do,” he said. “Take care of her or don’t, I don’t give a shit, but the cub will be marked today, and that’s final.”

Misaki submitted – she had little choice – but she was still seething when she returned to her bedroom. She softened a bit when she sighted the young cub, who was at last beginning to stir and twitch her little nose and ears. It wasn’t fair to the poor girl; Misaki so desperately wished to raise a cub of her own, but ripping one from its family was unimaginably cruel. Anther hadn’t always been kind to her, but it provided security, stability, and a sense of purpose where she previously had none… but even so, she knew she could not remain complicit in this evil. But what _could_ she do?

“Miyu…” Misaki sat herself at the edge of the bed, stroking the cub’s hair gently and taking deep and even breaths to cool her still-burning temper.

Miyu came slowly out of her exhausted slumber. She rumbled softly at the pleasure of gentle fingers in her hair, and her eyes fluttered open, gazing sleepily about.

“Did you sleep well?” Misaki asked with a chuckle.

Miyu’s eyes went wide, and instantly she went on the defensive, jerking away from Misaki’s hands and snarling hoarsely. Her sleep had been so deep she’d forgotten she was away from home, hopelessly lost with only a strange omega for a companion, and the shock of that re-realization frightened her.

“Easy now, it’s okay!” Misaki said. “It’s just me, Misaki. Do you remember?”

Recognition slowly dawned in Miyu’s eyes. “Misaki,” she said, and slowly relaxed her tight-strung body. “I want to go home. Please, I want to go home today.”

“You will,” Misaki replied, and hoped the cub would not catch the faltering of her voice. “Let’s get you washed up and fed first, though, alright? We can’t have you getting sick after spending all day in the cold rain yesterday.”

Miyu was plainly unhappy with that answer, and her lip came up in a heartbreaking pout, but she understood even at her young age that compliance most likely meant living another day, and a higher chance of getting home quicker. So she took her joyless bath and ate her breakfast in Misaki’s bed, happy at least that the food was good and that her clothes were clean. Still, there was but one question on her anxious cub mind.

“When can I call my mama?” she asked once her plate was clean.

Misaki’s phone dinged, and she stared gravely at it for a moment before turning her attention back to the hopeful little alpha. “Soon, little one,” she said. “But right now I have to go take care of something. Just wait here like a good cub, alright?”

Miyu was hit with a cold rush of fear at the thought of being left alone in this foreign bedroom. She didn’t know Misaki, but the omega was kind, and the only source of comfort Miyu had at the moment, so Miyu clung desperately to her sleeve, trembling.

“Don’t leave me in here!” she pleaded.

Misaki could feel her heart shattering at the sight of pitiful Miyu. “I promise I won’t be long,” she said, her voice wavering. “Just lay down and watch TV, okay? There’s a brave alpha.”

Miyu was still stiff with fear, but she let Misaki tuck her back into the bed and did not fuss any further when the omega left the room. Again, compliance was key to her survival and hopefully rescue. The children’s program on TV was one she often watched with Emi in the mornings while Natsumi rattled her baby toys and Kasumi cleaned the kitchen. The familiarity of it brought her some comfort, at least, but her nerves were too far into overdrive for her to focus properly on it and relax. She clutched at the blanket, lonely tears now welling in her eyes once again as she yearned for her mother and her father and the rest of her pack.

The doorknob jiggled then, and Miyu sat up and wiped her eyes, happy that Misaki was back and that she could call her mother. When the door swung open, though, an overwhelming alpha musk assailed her nostrils, and she shifted instantly, backing herself into the farthest corner of the bed and roaring for all her tiny body was worth. Two adult male alphas entered the room, and, unperturbed by the cub’s desperate shrieking and flailing claws, the younger one grabbed hold of Miyu and began to carry her, squirming and kicking and snarling, out of the safety of Misaki’s bedroom.

“God, she’s a lively one, isn’t she?” the other, older alpha chuckled.

“Hell yeah she is!” said the younger one. “Help me carry her, I can’t get a good grip!”

All of Miyu’s basest instincts were on fire, screaming at her that this was the end, that death was just around the corner if she did not act, and act her body did, bucking and twisting and clawing against the iron grips of the older alphas. The scent of them only fueled Miyu’s fury, and when they at last arrived in a new room, the cub was beyond all conscious thought, so overcome was she with the explosive frenzy and incredible adrenaline that was characteristic of the worst alpha shifts.

Had Miyu been in a clearer state of mind, she might have realized that she was being strapped down, but her focus was entirely on fending off the multiple alphas that now surrounded her. She fought savagely against them, slashing and snapping at their intrusive fingers and kicking indiscriminately at any bodies within reach, and roaring until her throat could take no more. In the end, though, she was only a little cub, and ultimately helpless against the claws of so many adult alphas. She still wriggled and jerked and snapped at her captors even once she was fully restrained, her eyes completely glazed over with unseeing rage and her heart nearly bursting from her chest.

There came a dull buzzing sound from her left, which gnawed at her nerves in the worst way, and she screamed in its general direction, willing it and all the horrible alphas to drop dead where they stood and leave her in peace. One of the alphas began to draw in close, curious buzzing tool in hand, and Miyu gave a great cub bellow, high-pitched and scratchy but desperately earnest. The sting of the tool against her wrist shocked her, and a fresh wave of both terror and fury struck her as she struggled against her bonds, unable to escape the frightening pain of the inking needle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> god that was long as fuck hahaha sorry i took so long. heck i didn't even get to include any kasu-parent interaction or anyone confronting yumi about her pregnancy, but that's how it goes
> 
> please leave me a hot comment to read after work my friends!!!!!!!!!!


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